prosthetic

In the future, we'll all have cyborg bodies with replaceable parts, right? The transition to immortality, though, may take some getting used to. Touch Bionics has a handy new tool to help us practice.

The Scottish maker of the i-Limb Pulse bionic hand is showing off its new Virtu-limb, a tool it describes as "a groundbreaking simulation and training product for myoelectric upper limb prostheses." … Read more

ITK, a Japanese start-up that makes eclectic products such as walking sticks and gardening tools, is developing a low-cost, flexible robot hand that could be used in hazardous environments.

The Handroid is a remotely-operated hand with five movable fingers. It weighs roughly 1.6 pounds.

As seen in the promo vid below, users can operate it with a master-slave glove system so that their hand movements are reproduced by Handroid.

That could come in handy in places like the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where workers have struggled to manipulate doors with iRobot PackBots.

ITK, a spinoff of a machining company near Nagoya, wants to develop the Handroid into a prosthetic that can pick up electrical impulses from a user's muscles, just like Touch Bionics' i-Limb Pulse.

But as a robot appendage, it could cost only a fraction of the price of the i-Limb Pulse. Robonable reports ITK wants to market the Handroid in two years and sell it with the glove controller for some $6,500. … Read more

A passive prosthetic leg, says 23-year-old amputee Craig Hutto, is always a step behind. But a new leg built by researchers at Vanderbilt University "is only a split-second behind."

Hutto, who is 6 feet 4 inches, has been testing the bionic leg for a good chunk of the seven-year research project at the school's Center for Intelligent Mechatronics. (Check out his crazy story about how a shark nearly tore off his leg when he was fishing in Florida at age 16.)

What sets the Vanderbilt leg apart from its predecessors is its use of recent advances in computer, sensor, electric motor, and battery tech to enable the prosthetic to be the first ever that powers knee and ankle joints in unison.

"We have validated our hypothesis that the right technology was available to make a lower-limb prosthetic with powered knee and ankle joints," says research head Michael Goldfarb, a professor of mechanical engineering, in a news release. "Our device illustrates the progress we are making in integrating man and machine."

The device weighs in at 9 pounds, which is actually less than most human lower legs. On one charge, it can operate at normal levels of activity for roughly three days. And it features an "anti-stumble" routine; if the leg senses that its user is starting to stumble, the leg lifts to avoid obstruction and plants on the floor to optimize balance.… Read more

Eric and Donald reveal their TV watching habits and the lies behind tablet marketing. Also, the bionic arm just got cooler, the human computer interface is a temporary tattoo, and plans to put the Crave show in a van... a small one.

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What if, instead of waiting a few weeks for your dentist to produce a cast for dental implants or replacement crowns, your jaw was scanned and, during that same dentist's visit, you were able to pull a perfect polymer shape out of a 3D printer and be on your merry way?

Mechanical engineers in Iran report in the International Journal of Rapid Manufacturing that printing our own teeth may not be so far off into the future.

While the process could be prohibitively expensive for years to come, it turns out that 3D printing, coupled with the comparatively affordable cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT), may ultimately revolutionize prosthetic dentistry.

The tech, called rapid prototyping, uses a 3D image to control a laser that cures powdered or liquid polymer into highly complex shapes. In fact, Hossein Kheirollahi of the Imam Hossein University and Farid Abbaszadeh of the Islamic Azad University say this technology can produce just about any solid, porous, or complicated shape.

While the Iranian team has been able to demonstrate the use of rapid prototyping in developing dental objects quickly, we're likely at least a few years out from actual commercial development.

Below, watch tool replication via 3D printing:… Read more

More lifelike, functional prosthetics for lost fingers may soon be more readily available as mechanical digits known as X Fingers are set to be mass-produced within six months, according to inventor Dan Didrick.

X Fingers are fashioned out of surgical steel and bend naturally with the movement of residual fingers. They're simple, lightweight, body-powered, and don't require any electronics or electricity.

The removable devices can be covered in thermoplastic for a lifelike appearance. Depending on the configuration they're sometimes anchored in a wrist strap.

Florida-based Didrick was motivated in part by a desire to help a hearing-impaired person regain sign language ability after losing fingers. He whittled his first concept prototype out of pine wood.

Then he began using 3D design software to refine his invention. Eight years after initial sketches, hundreds of X Fingers are in use today, and Didrick Medical has also produced X Thumbs.

There seems to be a big demand for these simple devices. Citing U.S. Bureau of Labor data, the company says about 8,000 work-related amputations occur each year involving one or more fingers. … Read more

Not to be outdone by Boy Scouts who can now earn a robotics badge, a team of Girl Scouts from Iowa has created a prize-winning prosthetic device to help a 3-year-old girl born without fingers on her right hand.

The Flying Monkeys robotics team developed the BOB-1 tool as part of the FIRST Lego League (FLL) competition, an international kids' robotics program.

The Monkeys are 11 to 13 years old, including one who has a limb difference that provided inspiration for the invention. The girls consulted a prosthetics maker and an occupational therapist and came up with a design that has a platform strapped to the arm as well as a cylindrical holder for writing implements or other tools.

The device helped 3-year-old Danielle hold a pencil with her right arm and write for the first time. It also netted the Flying Monkeys an FLL Global Innovation award of up to $20,000 to patent the invention, which they have applied for (PDF).

Danielle's family has worked with the team to improve the device and would like another for a 5-year-old boy it adopted who also has a limb difference.

FLL is part of the Girl Scouts' focus on STEM skills. The FIRST Championship, which just wrapped up in St. Louis, featured the Girl Scout GENIUS team, which installed a rear-view camera and sensor system on a wheelchair to improve visibility and navigation.

I can't imagine what these girls will be inventing 10 years from now. … Read more

For centuries now, horses have been passed up by technology--forced to live in the shadows of manmade monstrosities like the train or the motorcar that add insult to injury by co-opting the name of their equine forebears with twisted phrases like "Iron Horse," "horsepower," and "Mustang GT."

Those dark times are coming to an end; the age of the bionic horse is upon us.

A miniature horse born sans much of his right leg was recently fitted with a nifty new prosthesis that makes him able to run like some sort of Lee Majors/Seabiscuit hybrid, except, uh...smaller.

When we first heard about this story, we naturally all had the same reaction: "We've gotta get on whatever health insurance plan that tiny horse has!"… Read more

Researchers are ready to advance their tests of a novel brain-computer interface (BCI) from animals to human subjects, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency just granted them more than $6 million over the next three years to get those human clinical trials under way.

Ongoing research out of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the University of Pittsburgh has already demonstrated that the team's tiny 10x10 array of electrodes implanted on the surface of a monkey's brain can process activity from individual neurons to guide a robotic arm through such simple tasks as turning doorknobs and … Read more