Hero Arm: world's first medically approved 3D printed bionic arm

[Tefal]

Says it's open source too so you could technically make one yourself if you had the skills and a 3 printer

Unfortunately they don't seem to have source files up though They do however have the files for their bionic hand - https://openbionicslabs.com/shop/brunel-hand (scroll to bottom)

I wonder if they could get better functioning arms/hands and easier learning intuition from the users by using neural impulse actuators instead of relying on muscle responses ?

Wouldn't using actual nerve impulses be very difficult require surgery etc and be really expensive.

The idea behind this is its relatively cheap

 

[Tefal]

The problem with making artificial limbs stronger and faster than the originals is that you end up transferring excessive loads to the wearer's skeleton and that won't end well.

Endo/exoskeleton upgrades

 

[Tefal]

It will eventually get to a point where one of these is better than a real arm.
Question is would able bodied people be able to get there arm amputated willingly and replaced with one of these? There would be plenty of people who would want to do it.

Define better, say you give it a pull strength 50 times a nornal human, you try to use that strength all that happens is you rip the next organic joint up out of its socket

 

[Minusorange]

Wouldn't using actual nerve impulses be very difficult require surgery etc and be really expensive.

No

The tech just needs maturing

 

[Angilion]

Wouldn't using actual nerve impulses be very difficult require surgery etc and be really expensive.

The idea behind this is its relatively cheap

It depends.

If a person with a fully functional brain is to use nerve impulses to control an artificial arm, then not really. I think it might be necessary to have surgery done to keep the nerves working, but I'm not sure about that. The arm itself though, definitely not. It's possible to detect nerve signals from outside, so a band of sensors on the remaining natural part of the arm will be fine for detecting the nerve signals and a quite low-power computer will be fine for interpreting them and converting them into signals to control the motors in the artificial arm. Most of the work is still being done by the person's brain - that calculates required positioning, strength, duration, etc and generates the required signals.

If a person with a fully functional brain is to use nerve impulses to feel with an artificial arm, then yes. It requires specialised surgery and complex equipment and specialised configuration (and therefore serious expense) to get artificial signals from sensors on the artificial arms into the person's brain as signals from their arm. It can be done and it has been done, but it's difficult and expensive to do. The working setup I saw involved a specialised surgeon re-routing nerves from a person's fingertips up to their shoulder during an amputation of their arm and then additional hardware to stimulate those rerouted nerves according to signals from the sensors on the fingertips of the artificial arm. The patient's brain adapted to the change in input very quickly and integrated it into their proprioception, so they perceived it as sensory information from their own fingertips despite the fact that it was sensors on an artificial arm sending signals to hardware to stimulate nerves on their shoulder. It's a one-off prototype (to the extent that the hardware stimulating the rerouted nerves was being held in place by the surgeon because there wasn't any sort of mounting yet) but it proved that the approach works. The patient obviously knew what was really happening, but that didn't stop it working. The human brain is versatile enough to work around the change and integrate the new signals.

If the body control parts of the person's brain aren't working correctly, it's a different matter entirely. That would probably require a powered exoskeleton controlled by conscious thought, which would probably not be good enough anyway. Conscious thought is too slow.

 

[Tefal]

Reading neve impulses externally though in a limb would be very difficult wouldnt it theyre tiny, deeply buried and thier position relative to the sensor changes constantly making picking out the same signal each time hard. Ie they have to pick out individual finger signals not from the individual finger nerves but from a big central bundle thsts always moving

I've never seen an external neural pick up that didn't go on the head and use very vague things instead of the actual required action.

If you've got a link so such a sensor if be really interested to see it, I thought most of the time they used airbladers pressed onto the skin for this sort of thing

 

[Angilion]

Reading neve impulses externally though in a limb would be very difficult wouldnt it theyre tiny, deeply buried and thier position relative to the sensor changes constantly making picking out the same signal each time hard. Ie they have to pick out individual finger signals not from the individual finger nerves but from a big central bundle thsts always moving

I've never seen an external neural pick up that didn't go on the head and use very vague things instead of the actual required action.

If you've got a link so such a sensor if be really interested to see it, I thought most of the time they used airbladers pressed onto the skin for this sort of thing

Bah, I was wrong. I looked for the video I remembered and it's muscle activity the sensors are detecting, not nerve activity. Although I'm not sure how - the person in question had their arm amputated above the elbow, so how could muscle activity in their upper arm show the signals sent by their brain to move the tip of their thumb or suchlike? The detection was that fine - they had at least close to normal manual dexterity in the artificial hand on the artificial arm and could precisely move individual joints of individual fingers and thumb.

 

[Tefal]

Bah, I was wrong. I looked for the video I remembered and it's muscle activity the sensors are detecting, not nerve activity. Although I'm not sure how - the person in question had their arm amputated above the elbow, so how could muscle activity in their upper arm show the signals sent by their brain to move the tip of their thumb or suchlike? The detection was that fine - they had at least close to normal manual dexterity in the artificial hand on the artificial arm and could precisely move individual joints of individual fingers and thumb.

Like the brain probe I think they use other actions.


So "tense your bicep" becomes maped to the action of "clench fist" etc

Those mind controllers for games have things like "make a fist with your right hand" this moves cusror right. Raise your left arm moves it up etc.

They take big signals and jsut remap them