TECHNOLOGICAL IMPACTS IN BIONIC HAND

DARPA’S BRAIN-CONTROLLED PROSTHETIC ARM AND A BIONIC HAND THAT CAN TOUCH

The US Department of Defense has a good reason to fund research in advanced bionic limbs—in fact, it has a couple thousand good reasons. In the last thirteen years, 2000 men and women have lost a limb in military service. And of course, military amputees are hardly the only amputees. Far from it.

Advanced prosthetic research in clinical settings is providing a ray of hope for all these folks—military or civilian—as participants in DARPA’s Reliable Neural-Interface Technology (RE-NET) program continue to make progress in the realm of brain-interfacing prosthetic devices.

In the f video (below) a man manipulates a prosthetic arm using targeted muscle re-innervation (TMR) developed by Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. TMR allows direct manipulation of the prosthetic with thoughts alone.

How does it work? After a limb is amputated the nerves still fire as they once did—they just don’t lead anywhere anymore. So, soon after the amputation doctors surgically reattach severed nerve endings to different muscles in the arm.

The patient thinks of moving his hand, elbow, or wrist and the old nerve groups fire as normal. Now, however, they contract these new muscles. A computer learns to recognize various muscle contraction patterns as commands for particular movements of the prosthetic—‘turn wrist’, ‘close hand’, or ‘bend elbow’.

The technique has been used successfully in both leg and arm amputees. We wrote about another TMR patient last year, Zac Vawter, who climbed 2,100 stairs to the top of Chicago’s Willis Tower on a TMR-controlled prosthetic leg.

The cool thing about the latest TMR demonstration is the complexity of motions the subject is able to employ. As he snatches a piece of cloth out of the air, he’s simultaneously bending his prosthetic elbow and closing his hand.

A second demonstration had a flat interface nerve electrode (FINE), developed by researchers at Case Western Reserve University. FINE gives rudimentary sensory input back to an amputee. The technique is similar to TMR, but instead of sending a signal from the brain to the prosthetic, the prosthetic stimulates nerve endings to send a signal to the brain. The brain learns to interpret the stimulation as touch.

Being able to feel the roughness of a surface or sensing pressure can help the patient decide how hard to grip and removes the need to always be looking at an object as it’s manipulated. Perhaps the best thing about FINE (and TMR) is the procedures are minimally invasive—no cortical implant required.

For now, TMR and FINE are being tested separately with select patients. But in the future, one can imagine a combination of the two in a single prosthetic device—restoring touch and natural movement to those who’ve lost an arm or leg, and maybe beyond restoration, giving these future cyborgs powers they didn’t have before.

New artificial, bionic hands start to get real feelings

Simple tasks, like plucking the stem off a cherry, are still monumental challenges for artificial hands. With a bill of materials perhaps a few hundred components long, it is not surprising that their functionality is low compared with one assembled from trillions of components. A new prosthetic bionic hand, designed and built by researchers at Case Western University is now capable of using measurements from 20 sensor points to control the grip force of its digits. Incredibly, the sensor data is linked directly to the sensory nerves in the patient’s forearm. The control for the grip closure is then extracted myoelectrically from the normal biological return loop to the muscles in the forearm.

The key to making this device work is an instrument known as a cuff electrode. While these electrodes have been under development for decades for use as stimulators for the optic nerve, it has been difficult to get them to reliably stimulate axons for extended periods of time. The new cuffs used here are able to target individual groups of axons without actually penetrating the protective sheaths that segregate particular groups of them. As you can see in the picture below, a nerve has a complex cross section where individual channels exchange members continuously along their length. When multiple cuffs are eventually used on the same nerve, this particular feature of nerve bundles will come in handy because it provides a way to target different axons at different points in the nerve.

If for example, the first cuff stimulates more axons than is actually desired, the second cuff could, at least in theory, provide sub-threshold current to shunt particular axons that can be better targeted at the second cuff — in effect acting as firefighters do when they intentionally burn select areas to preempt the advance of an out-of-control forest fire, only a lot faster. In the forearm, there are three major nerves, the median, radial, and ulnar, which connect both motor and sensory axons within various funiculi. Just to clarify here, a nerve bundle, or funiculus, is in turn composed of several smaller nerve fasciculi. For now, the researchers use just one cuff per nerve, with the data from the 20 sensor points shared between them.

The key to targeting axons deep in the interior of the nerve is to filet them out like the header on a ribbon connector by using a flat cuff, instead of the traditional round design. It appears that the nerves can handle this seeming trauma because the two patients outfitted with these devices have shown good performance now for 18 months. We just heard that the world’s first official cyborg, Neil Harbisson, had his cybernaut status minted with a government seal of approval. He is even permitted to have his passport photo taken with head-mounted hardware. Provided this new bionic hand continues to function for the long haul, it seems that at least two more names might soon be added to that list.

iLIMB Bionic Hand Looks, Feels Like the Real Thing

We at the Giz are fond of both hands and bionic things - so this iLIMB, from Scottish firm Touch Bionics, is so far up our street it's parked in our car port. A prosthetic hand with five separately-powered fingers, the iLIMB functions via the electric signals generated by the remaining portion of a patient's limb, allowing the fingers to open and close. The iLIMB, which went on sale yesterday, has been successfully fitted out on several patients - including US Army Sergeant Juan Arredondo, whose left arm was severed below the elbow whilst out on patrol in Iraq.

When an explosive device was detonated via cell phone the Infantry Division sergeant was severely injured, alongside two of his colleagues. Following an unsuccessful five-hour operation to try and re-attach the severed hand (Sgt Arredondo had had the presence of mind to grab his limb from where it was still holding the steering wheel when he fled the vehicle) the soldier was sent back to his hometown to recuperate.

Finding it hard to mix with anyone who was not a wounded veteran, Sgt Arredondo became depressed, trying to cope with the loss of his hand. It was not until an organization called the Wounded Warrior Project sent the sergeant on activity trips, including a climb with Aron Ralston, who had been forced to sever his own arm after it was crushed by a boulder, that Arredondo began to feel better.

Initial attempts at fitting a prosthetic limb were not a great success, as Arredondo felt they were nothing more than a glorified lobster claw: until he saw the iLIMB. "Cool," he thought. This is more like it. The iLIMB enables Juan to throw baseballs, type using the finger-point feature, open doors on his own and even shoot a rifle. It is, he says, easier to hold with his prosthetic hand than it was before.

"I can pick up a Styrofoam cup without crushing it," said Sgt. Arredondo. "With my other myoelectric hand, I would really have to concentrate on how much pressure I was putting on the cup. The i-LIMB hand does things naturally. I can just grab the cup like a regular person."

BeBionic 3: Watch a highly advanced bionic hand in action

If you haven't kept up with advancements in prosthetics, now's a good time to observe how a new generation of devices can undertake even the most precise tasks

Several months ago, my colleague Tim Hornyak wrote about the Bebionic 3 myoelectric prosthethic hand , a landmark prosthesis that enables a spectacular range of Terminator-like precise gripping and hand maneuverability.

A video making the rounds this week stars 53-year-old Nigel Ackland -- a wearer of the device -- who shows us that we've come extraordinarily far in prosthetic research, perhaps shockingly so if you don't keep up with the subject.

Ackland lost part of his arm in an industrial blender accident six years ago, went through an elective trans-radial amputation, and then used several aesthetic and electric arms that were disappointingly dysfunctional or cosmetically inferior.

In the video below, Ackland describes his situation and how the BeBionic changed his life, and reveals the ease of doing a series of complex finger postures. It's truly stunning to observe the fellow easily cracking an egg or opening a beer and pouring it into a glass.

"The robotic arm is so sensitive it means the father-of-one can touch type on a computer keyboard, peel vegetables, and even dress himself for the first time in six years," notes a video description about Ackland.

Man with the world's most advanced bionic hand can now tie his own shoelaces (and, more importantly, drink beer)

The bionic man fitted with a high-tech robotic hand yesterday showed off his latest upgrade which is so advanced he can now tie his shoelaces again.Nigel Ackland from Royston, Cambridgeshire, has had his Terminator-like mechanical limb since last November, but it has now been upgraded to make it more sensitive.

And after a recent accident involving a runaway dog which left the 53-year-old missing several robot fingers, designers have also reinforced the limb with stainless steel and titanium.It means the whole hand is stronger and the upgrade also included insulating pads stop it picking up heat or static electricity.
Upgraded: Nigel Ackland with his bebionic3 prosthetic limb - the most advanced in the world - which has transformed his life

Upgraded: Nigel Ackland with his bebionic3 prosthetic limb - the most advanced in the world - which has transformed his life

'Since I was first given the hand they have developed it several times whenever someone who is trialling it notices a design flaw,' Mr Ackland said.

'I was walking the dog and he took off chasing something ripping the lead out of my hand - but unfortunately the fingers came off too.'So they added stainless steel into the links to make sure they were stronger and could with stand that kind of force again.'Its crazy I can now tie my shoe laces for the first time in years and play with playing cards. I'm developing my use of the hand more and more daily.

Card sharp: Mr Ackland, a former smelter, lost his arm when it became caught in an industrial blending machine at the Johnson Matthey smelting plant in 2006

'It really is a whole new quality of life.'

Right-handed Mr Ackland, a former smelter, who lives with his wife Vanessa, 50, and son Conor, 19, lost his arm when it became caught in an industrial blending machine at the Johnson Matthey smelting plant in 2006.

Stronger: After a recent accident involving a runaway dog which left the 53-year-old missing several robot fingers, designers have also reinforced the limb with stainless steel and titanium

After six months of operations and infections he opted to have an elective trans-radial (below elbow) amputation.But the severity of Mr Ackland's injury meant the amputation wasn't straightforward and left him with a flared stump and difficulty finding suitable prosthetics.He was forced to take early retirement, but struggled to help at home became his dexterity was limited to the basic tasks he could perform with a replacement hook

Then, in May last year, Leeds-based prosthetics company RSLSteeper approached the beleaguered amputee and asked if he would like to trial their latest hand - the most high-tech available in the world.It has a lifelike appearance and grip patterns which can be wirelessly programmed and tailored to suit each individual's requirements.

Quality of life: While the hand has changed his life Mr Ackland says it still has limitations and the keen musician has not been able to start playing the piano and saxophone again

Mr Ackland operates the futuristic arm by sending the same signal from his brain he used to operate his original, human arm.The thought flexes muscles in his upper arm, movements which are detected by sensors that trigger one of 14 pre-programmed grips, mirroring human movements.The different patterns include a clenched fist, a pointed finger and a thumb and forefinger pincer motion that is lighter or heavier according to how the user tenses their upper arm.

Italian man to get first bionic hand that lets amputees physically ‘feel’

A man in Italy in his 20s who lost part of his arm in an accident will have a new bionic hand attached via electrodes clipped directly to his nervous system that will finally let him ‘feel’ what he is touching.The first bionic hand to let amputees physically “feel” what they are touching will be transplanted onto a human later this year.

Scientists say the new sytem should let the recipient control the hand with his thoughts — and at the same time receive signals back to his brain from the hand's sensors.

An Italian man who lost the lower section of his arm in an accident will have the hand attached, via electrodes clipped on to two of his main nerves, directly to his nervous system.

Scientists say this should let him control the hand with his thoughts — and at the same time receive signals back to his brain from the hand's sensors.By all accounts, they claim, he should feel like he is in possession of a fully functioning hand

Dr. Silvestro Micera, of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, revealed details of the planned pioneering surgery at an American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston this week.

Do you feel what I feel? Says Dr. Silvestro Micera, of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, “This is real progress, real hope for amputees. It will be the first prosthetic that will provide real-time sensory feedback for grasping.”

"This is real progress, real hope for amputees. It will be the first prosthetic that will provide real-time sensory feedback for grasping.

"It is clear that the more sensory feeling an amputee has, the more likely you will get full acceptance of that limb.

"We could be on the cusp of providing new and more effective clinical solutions to amputees in the next year.

"The idea would be that it could deliver two or more sensations. You could have a pinch and receive information from three fingers, or feel movement in the hand and wrist.

"We have refined the interface (connecting the hand to the patient), so we hope to see much more detailed movement and control of the hand."
In previous versions, the amount of feeling on the hand was limited to just two sensory zones. The latest prototype will send sensory signals back from all the fingertips, the palm and the wrists.

In previous versions, the amount of feeling on the hand was limited to just two sensory zones. The latest prototype will send sensory signals back from all the fingertips, the palm and the wrists.

Micera said that the first patient, who is in his 20s and lives in Rome, will test the bionic hand for one month.If successful, he claimed that fully working models could be available for amputees across the world within the next year.It comes four years after an earlier, fixed, version of the hand was attached to Pierpaolo Petruzziello's nervous system in a similar manner.Having lost his arm in a car accident, he said he could wiggle his fingers, clench them into a fist and hold objects.But the amount of feeling was limited as the hand only had two sensory zones. The latest prototype will send sensory signals back from all the fingertips, the palm and the wrists.

Inventor Creates 3D-Printed Prosthetic Robohand

South African carpenter Richard van As suffered a woodworking accident and lost four fingers on his right hand. But instead of accepting his new disability he decided to create a set of mechanical fingers to replace his lost digits. After two years of research, he created the prosthetic Robohand – and he has made the blueprints available to download from the Thingiverse 3D-printed design database.

Richard van As, robohand, 3d printers, prosthetic hand, prosthetics, prosthetic limbs, indiegogo scheme, plastic, 3d printing materials

During his initial research, Richard found that there were no standard prosthetics able to replace his lost fingers, and any experimental technology was incredibly expensive. Instead, he began experimenting in his garage to create a home-made replacement.

Collaborating with an American colleague, who donated two MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printers to assist with prototyping, Richard finalized his Robofinger and created a mechanical hand. His design was scripted, and the first Robohand has now been printed in South Africa.
The prototype hand has been fitted to a 5-year-old boy, but in order to continue the device’s development, Richard has launched an Indiegogo scheme to raise funds. Money raised would go towards buying new materials with the goal of presenting Robohand to Congress at the end of 2013.
Robohand has been nominated for the Rockefeller Innovators Award and has been exhibited at the Science Museum of London. Watch the video below to see how Richard created the hand.

Dean Kamen's "Luke Arm" Prosthesis Readies for Clinical Trials

Dean Kamen's ”Luke arm”—a prosthesis named for the remarkably lifelike prosthetic worn by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars —came to the end of its two-year funding last month. Its fate now rests in the hands of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which funded the project. If DARPA gives the project the green light—and some greenbacks—the state-of-the-art bionic arm will go into clinical trials. If all goes well, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gives its approval, returning veterans could be wearing the new artificial limb by next year.

The Luke arm grew out of DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, which was created in 2005 to fund the development of two arms. The first initiative, the four-year, US $30.4 million Revolutionizing Prosthetics contract, to be completed in 2009, led by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., seeks a fully functioning, neurally controlled prosthetic arm using technology that is still experimental. The latter, awarded to Deka Research and Development Corp., Kamen’s New Hampshire–based medical products company (perhaps best known for the Segway), is a two-year $18.1 million 2007 effort to give amputees an advanced prosthesis that could be available immediately ”for people who want to literally strap it on and go.” Kamen’s team designed the Deka arm to be controlled with noninvasive measures, using an interface a bit like a joystick.

On the second floor of the mill complex that houses Deka, a 650-square-meter space is dedicated to realizing the Luke arm. Right past the entrance is a life-sized Terminator figure missing its left arm; in its place is the same kind of harness that patients wear when testing the Deka arm. It’s there for inspiration. The Terminator is in line for its new arm behind volunteers like Chuck Hildreth, who come to Deka to help the engineers prepare for clinical trials.

Hildreth, 44, lost both arms 26 years ago, when he was electrocuted while painting a power substation. His badly burned right arm was so damaged that doctors even had to remove the shoulder blade. They saved part of Hildreth’s less-damaged left arm, amputating about halfway between the shoulder and the elbow.

Since then Hildreth has been wearing—or more accurately, not wearing—a traditional prosthesis. As Kamen discovered when he talked to patients in rehabilitation clinics and at VA hospitals, after the initial shock of amputation wears off, usually within a year or two, patients stop wearing their prostheses. Even extreme levels of amputation don’t much curb this tendency. Wearing the burdensome prosthetic is simply not justified by the small amount of assistance it provides, says Hildreth. ”It gets sweaty and slippery,” he says. He’s gotten so used to living without arms that he changes the blades in his lawn mower with his feet.

When DARPA director Tony Tether and Revolutionizing Prosthetics program manager Colonel Geoffrey Ling approached him in 2005, Kamen says he thought they were crazy—”in the good kind of way,” he says. There was no financial incentive to create a next-generation prosthetic arm. The research and development costs were enormous. Unless funded by DARPA, no private company would take such a risk for such a comparatively small market (in the Americas, about 6000 people require arm prostheses each year). Kamen spent a few weeks traveling around the country interviewing patients, doctors, and researchers to get an idea of the current technology—and soon saw the deficit in available arm prosthetics. He was swayed by the discrepancy between the current state of leg prostheses and that of arm prostheses. ”Prosthetic legs are in the 21st century,” he says. ”With prosthetic arms, we’re in the Flintstones.”

So he set out to reinvent the prosthesis that has been pretty much the same since the U.S. Civil War. Until now, a state-of-the-art prosthetic arm has meant having up to three powered joints. However, since this type of arm is frustrating to control and doesn’t provide that much functionality, most users still opt for the hook-and-cable device which has been around for over a century. In either case, these prosthetics only have three degrees of freedom—a user can move the elbow, the wrist, and open and close some variant of a hook.

The timing was good: microprocessors had gotten small enough, and power consumption efficient enough, to make it possible to cram the control electronics, lithium batteries, motors, and wiring into a package the size, shape, and weight of a human arm—about 3.6 kilograms. Still, the engineering was tough, says program manager Ling. ”You’re asking an engineer to build an arm that can do what your arm can do, but they’re confined to a package the size of—an arm. In addition to being the right size and weight, it also has to look like an arm!”

In order to make a better arm, Kamen first had to figure out what was wrong with the old one. Part of the reason the technology was still in ”the Flintstones” was a lack of agility: a human arm has 22 degrees of freedom, not three. The Luke Arm prosthetic is agile because of the fine motor control imparted by the enormous amount of circuitry inside the arm, which enables 18 degrees of freedom. The engineers fought for space inside the arm and created workarounds when they couldn’t have the space they needed, such as using rigid-to-flex circuit boards folded into origami-like shapes inside the tiny spaces, which are connected by a dense thicket of wiring.

The arm has motor control fine enough for test subjects to pluck chocolate-covered coffee beans one by one, pick up a power drill, unlock a door, and shake a hand. Six preconfigured grip settings make this possible, with names like chuck grip, key grip, and power grip. The different grips are shortcuts for the main operations humans perform daily.

The Luke arm also had to be modular, usable by anyone with any level of amputation. The arm works as though it had a very complicated set of vacuum cleaner attachments; the hand contains separate electronics, as does the forearm. The elbow is powered, and the electronics that power it are contained in the upper arm. The shoulder is also powered and can accomplish the never-before-seen feat of reaching up as if to pick an apple off a tree.

It must be less than what a native limb would have weighed, because in an amputee the human skeletal system can no longer be used as a method of attachment. Instead, for amputations above the elbow, a user is strapped into a kind of harness. Deka engineers modeled the arm based on the weight of a statistically average female arm (about 3.6 kg), including all the electronics and the lithium battery. Amazingly, titanium, the legendarily light material, is too heavy to keep the arm under its weight limit—it can’t be made thin enough without bending—so the arm is mostly aluminum.

Kamen’s group found that the discomfort caused by the arm socket, where the prosthesis connects to the body, is one of the crucial reasons Hildreth and others stop wearing their prosthetics. The traditional connection method is designed to create the greatest possible surface area connecting the native limb to the prosthetic: basically, the residuum—the amputee’s stump—is stuffed into the prosthesis. But the strain of normal use often results in a sweaty, slippery connection that makes proper use of the prosthesis nearly impossible. It can also be painful. Deka’s new socket was designed to be used with the Luke arm, but it can also improve traditional prostheses.

The last piece of the puzzle was the user interface for controlling the arm. DARPA stipulated in Deka’s contract that the interface must be completely noninvasive. However, Kamen says, his engineers created the arm to support any means of control. When a Deka engineer tests the arm via a linked exoskeleton, the arm can replicate almost every subtlety of human movement. Of course, real users will not be operating a prosthetic with an existing limb: the exoskeleton merely showcases the arm’s potential.

Deka worked closely with the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, where neuroscientist Todd Kuiken has had recent successes in surgically rerouting amputees’ residual nerves—which connect the upper spinal cord to the 70 000 nerve fibers in the arm—to impart the ability to ”feel” the stimulation of a phantom limb. Normally, the nerves travel from the upper spinal cord across the shoulder, down into the armpit, and into the arm. Kuiken pulled them away from the armpit and under the clavicle to connect to the pectoral muscles. The patient thinks about moving the arm, and signals travel down nerves that were formerly connected to the native arm but are now connected to the chest. The chest muscles then contract in response to the nerve signals. The contractions are sensed by electrodes on the chest, the electrodes send signals to the motors of the prosthetic arm—and the arm moves. With Kuiken’s surgery, a user can control the Luke arm with his or her own muscles, as if the arm were an extension of the person’s flesh. However, the Luke arm also provides feedback to the user without surgery.

Instead, the feedback is given by a tactor. A tactor is a small vibrating motor—about the size of a bite-size candy bar—secured against the user’s skin. A sensor on the Luke hand, connected to a microprocessor, sends a signal to the tactor, and that signal changes with grip strength. When a user grips something lightly, the tactor vibrates slightly. As the user’s grip tightens, the frequency of the vibration increases. This enables Hildreth to pick up and drink out of a flimsy paper cup without crushing it, or firmly hold a heavy cordless drill without dropping it. ”I can do things I haven’t done in 26 years,” he says, looking at his hand. ”I can peel a banana without squishing it.” Hildreth steers the Luke arm with joystick-like controllers embedded in the soles of his shoes. These customizable foot pedals are connected to the arm by long, flat cords. ”When I push down with my left big toe, the arm moves out,” he says, shifting to demonstrate. ”When I move my right big toe, it moves back in.” He shifts again, and the arm dutifully obeys. A wireless version is in the works.

In the United States, there are about 6000 upper extremity amputees in a given year. That number has risen due to the war in Iraq. The Deka arm is the earliest hope for the increasing number of Iraq war veterans who are coming home without arms.

At press time, Ling was sanguine about the Luke arm’s future. ”We’re trying to get a transition partner so it can go into clinical use and a commercial partner to get it out to the patients,” he says. ”This is no longer a science fair project.” The costly research and development, Kamen says, means that any company can now take over the Luke arm and look for ways to manufacture it cost-effectively. Depending on the degree of amputation, today’s state-of-the-art prosthetic arms can cost patients about $100 000 or more. Luke project manager Rick Needham says that the goal is to keep as close to that cost as possible.

But before the arm can be commercialized, it needs to be approved by the FDA, and that can’t happen without clinical trials. And right now it’s not clear who will fund those clinical trials. DARPA’s funding often ends after a project’s funding is picked up by some other organization. Deka doesn’t yet have such a transition partner.

”Clinical trials certainly have a cost,” says DARPA spokesperson Jan Walker. ”If no one funds the costs, then trials obviously can’t happen.” But she says DARPA’s funding procedures are not set in stone. Sometimes DARPA funding ends completely; sometimes the agency continues a low level of funding as the new organization ramps up its own funding. Walker declined to comment on specific plans for the Luke arm.

If DARPA continues funding the project, Kamen’s group would like to start clinical take-home trials sometime this year. Kamen hints that he has been in talks with Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and with other Veterans Affairs hospitals. ”Certainly within the next two years we hope to submit to the FDA for approval to sell the arm,” says Needham.

STILL ADVANCEMENTS TO GO !!!

BIONIC HAND

Wednesday, 18 December 2013

ABSTRACT

Fabrication:

Working video:

Monday, 9 December 2013

ADVANCEMENTS IN BIONIC HAND

DARPA’S BRAIN-CONTROLLED PROSTHETIC ARM AND A BIONIC HAND THAT CAN TOUCH

New artificial, bionic hands start to get real feelings

BeBionic 3: Watch a highly advanced bionic hand in action

Inventor Creates 3D-Printed Prosthetic Robohand

Dean Kamen's "Luke Arm" Prosthesis Readies for Clinical Trials