Prosthetics/ Augmentations

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Freitag
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Post by Freitag »

Scroll down. Watch the video

The talk here postulates that the technology and the philosophy are inseparable. Particularly when she talks about going beyond the need to make human looking prosthetics (which is sort of funny, because her first ones were not human looking at all)
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Post by Freitag »

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/07/2 ... ought.html

Now this is more like it....

I still don't thin you can surf the net or have any Chat Chat Chat style interactions with only a grid of 32 connections, but this is way way closer to a brain interface than anything else I've seen.

Here's hoping those test cases don't turn up with cyber sclerosis or anything nasty like that.


EDIT: fixed typoes
Last edited by Freitag on Sun Sep 12, 2010 9:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Freitag »

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0607/06070401

Now this one is cool, they've found a way for a mechanical attachment through the skin without leaving you vulnerable because you have a hole in your skin.

For non whole-body prosthetics, this might be one way that the plug-in will work for connecting to things and people
A revolutionary technique for the attachment of prosthetic limbs and fingers is being developed by a team of UCL scientists headed by Professor Gordon Blunn. Part of the UCL Institute of Orthopaedics and Musculoskeletal Science, the UCL Centre for Biomedical Engineering has developed an Intraosteous Transcutaneous Amputation Prosthesis (ITAP) – a means of attaching a metal implant to bone so that it sticks out through the skin and can have prosthetic attachments added.

Up to now, having an implant that breaks the skin would have left the patient susceptible to infection, but the new method enables the skin to form a seal around the implant, protecting it from infection. The scientific breakthrough came as a result of work by Catherine Pendegrass, who looked at how skin moulds around deer’s antlers for her doctoral thesis.

Dr Pendegrass said: “By looking at the way the soft tissues attach to deer antlers and using them as natural analogues for ITAP, we have been able to artificially mimic the morphology of the bone that penetrates the skin. This has enabled us to successfully develop an implant to which amputees’ soft tissues can attach without infection.” Her work has been published in ‘Biomaterials’ and will feature in a forthcoming edition of the ‘Journal of Anatomy’.
ITAP X-ray

Attaching a prosthetic limb directly to bone without infection will mean that prosthetics are much more comfortable, and will save on some of the costs associated with traditional prosthetics, such as replacement sockets, repeated fittings and treatments for infections and pressure sores.

An ongoing clinical trial of the technology is bearing promising results. It is due to continue for a further two years, during which time all patients will receive thorough follow-up work, including assessments of their condition, as measured by tests for picking up objects, grip strength, the condition of the implant and the ‘skin interface’.

Professor Blunn, Head of the Centre for Biomedical Engineering, said: “The patients who have received implants so far are doing very well.”

Because of the psychological impact of the loss of a limb or digit, the trial’s ethical criteria require that at least 12 months have passed since amputation for all participants. Some of the survivors of last year’s July 7 bombings who lost limbs in the attacks have expressed interest in the work, and it is hoped that, in time, the technology under development will be able to help them.

The new technology is manufactured by Stanmore Implants Worldwide, the commercial wing of the UCL Centre for Biomedical Engineering. Its managing director, Paul Unwin, believes that the implants may lead the way to ‘bionic prostheses’, which could be fully powered limbs operating under the control of the patient’s own nervous system. He said: “ITAP is a great example of a translational research partnership between a small innovative company and a world-leading UK university. The initial programme has been highly successful and if it continues, this success may provide the nucleus of a new company to fully exploit the technology.”
EDIT: I'm starting to quote the articles because although some things on the Internet live forever, when they get archived, their address changes.
Last edited by Freitag on Fri Jun 25, 2010 11:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by M4nu3l »

[quote="Freitag"]http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0607/06070401

Now this one is cool, they've found a way for a mechanical attachment through the skin without leaving you vulnerable because you have a hole in your skin.

For non whole-body prosthetics, this might be one way that the plug-in will work for connecting to things and people[/quote]

VERY interesting find.
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Post by Freitag »

This one is more like Vocaloid than GitS, but it is still really cool

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http://gizmodo.com/359018/cellphone-dis ... ridiculous
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Post by GhostLine »

It looks like the tech is continuing to improve for prosthetics....

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id ... _article=1
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Post by kenner »

GhostLine wrote:It looks like the tech is continuing to improve for prosthetics....

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id ... _article=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppILwXwsMng

Here's a short documentary from Discovery about this guy. Amazing!
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Post by Freitag »

Man that is cool.
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Post by Freitag »

Freitag wrote:http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0607/06070401

Now this one is cool, they've found a way for a mechanical attachment through the skin without leaving you vulnerable because you have a hole in your skin.

For non whole-body prosthetics, this might be one way that the plug-in will work for connecting to things and people
Update!

This technology is now in use for a bionic cat!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_britain_bionic_cat
LONDON – Oscar the cat may have lost one of his nine lives, but his new prosthetic paws make him one of the world's few bionic cats.

After losing his two rear paws in a nasty encounter with a combine harvester last October, the black cat with green eyes was outfitted with metallic pegs that link the ankles to new prosthetic feet and mimic the way deer antlers grow through skin. Oscar is now back on his feet and hopping over hurdles like tissue paper rolls.

After Oscar's farming accident, which happened when the 2 1/2-year-old-cat was lazing in the sun in the British Channel Isles, his owners, Kate and Mike Nolan, took him to their local veterinarian. In turn, the vet referred Oscar to Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick, a neuro-orthopedic surgeon in Eashing, 35 miles southwest of London.

Together with biomedical engineering experts, Fitzpatrick gave Oscar two metal prosthetic implants, or pegs. Those were attached to custom-built faux paws that are a bit wobbly, to imitate a cat's natural walk. But first, he covered the brown implants with black tape to match Oscar's fur.

Fitzpatrick said he and biomedical engineers designed the artificial paws so that they would be fused to the bone and skin. "That allows this implant to work as a seesaw on the bottom of the animal's limbs to give him (an) effectively normal gait," he said. "Oscar can now run and jump about as cats should do."

The veterinarians then inserted the peg-like implants by drilling them into Oscar's ankle bones in his rear legs. The metal implants are attached to the bone where Oscar lost his paws and were coated with a substance that helps bone cells grow directly over them. The cat's own skin then grew over the end of the peg to form a natural seal to prevent infections.

After rehabilitation training that taught Oscar how to walk again, the cat was on all four feet in less than four months. Oscar's owners said they hoped his new paws would also further the technology for developing artificial limbs for humans.

"This is a pretty lucky cat," said Dr. Mark Johnston, a veterinarian and spokesman for the British Small Animal Veterinary Association. "Giving a cat artificial limbs is a very novel solution." Johnston said that while there are many "perfectly happy" three-legged cats and dogs, animals that lose two legs do not usually fare as well.

Dogs might cope better with some sort of animal-wheelchair for their back legs, but cats don't usually adapt to that because of their freer lifestyle, he said. "If a cat has two legs that are damaged beyond repair, it's very hard to keep him going," he said. "We would generally euthanize a cat in that situation."

He doubted the technique would be widely available due to the cost and said it was still relatively rare for animals to lose two legs at once. Gordon Blunn, head of biomedical engineering at University College London, who led the effort to make Oscar's fake paws, said they cost about 2,000 pounds ($2,996) to make, not including the cost for the operation itself.

In 2008, Fitzpatrick made an artificial knee for a cat named Missy who was struck by a hit and run driver. In the U.S., several animals have received artificial limbs directly attached to their bones at North Carolina State University's College of Veterinary Medicine.

Johnston said the next six months to a year would be critical for Oscar. He said veterinarians would have to closely monitor the feline to make sure no infections, sores or other movement problems crop up.

"It may not last forever, but even if you provide the cat with a few years of pain-free mobility, it may well be worth it," he said.
EDIT: Adding second reference about same story as it also talks about use of ITAP for humans. The repair was for damage done in July 2005, I don't know how long ago the repair was made. The earlier story of ITAP was from 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100625/od_ ... ritain_cat
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Post by Jeff Georgeson »

Is this the same as the show on ... er ... can't remember if it's BBC or ITV or what ... called "Bionic Vet"? The ad showed a cat running around on artificial paws.
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Post by THYREN »

"A Canadian man who lost an eye in an accident has installed a tiny wireless camera in the empty socket"

... no, it's not connected to the brain, but he can record videos 8)


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvid ... eborg.html



soon though...
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Post by Freitag »

http://news.discovery.com/tech/transist ... chine.html

You'd need tens of thousands of these all individually addressable to be able to set up an I/O stream, but step 1 is about making a single connection.

Working on a scale-up is another task.

THE GIST

* Scientists embedded a biologically powered transistor inside a cell membrane.
* The device is the most intimate binding of man and machine yet achieved.
* The research could lead to new man-machine interfaces.

Man and machine can now be linked more intimately than ever, according to a new article in the journal ACS Nano Letters. Scientists have embedded a nano-sized transistor inside a cell-like membrane and powered it using the cell's own fuel.

The research could lead to new types of man-machine interactions where embedded devices could relay information about the inner workings of disease-related proteins inside the cell membrane, and eventually lead to new ways to read, and even influence, brain or nerve cells.

"This device is as close to the seamless marriage of biological and electronic structures as anything else that people did before," said Aleksandr Noy, a scientist at the University of California, Merced who is a co-author on the recent ACS Nano Letters. "We can take proteins, real biological machines, and make them part of a working microelectronic circuit."

To create the implanted circuit, the UC scientists began with a simple transistor, an electronic device that is the heart of nearly every cell phone and computer on the planet. Instead of using silicon, the most common material used in transistors, the scientists used a next generation material known as a carbon nanotube, a tiny straw-shaped material made from a single curved layer of carbon atoms arranged like the panels of a soccer ball.

The scientists then coated the carbon nanotube transistor with a lipid bilayer, basically a double wall of oil molecules that cells use to separate their insides from their environment. The scientists didn't use an actual cell membrane, however.

To this basic cellular structure the UC scientists added an ion pump, a biological device that pumps charged atoms of calcium, potassium, and other elements into and out of the cell. Then they added a solution of adenosine tri-phosphate, or ATP, which fuels the ion pump.

The ion pump changes the electrical charge inside the cell, which then changes the electrical charge going through the transistor, which the scientists could measure and monitor.

In their initial device the biological pump powered the artificial transistor. Future devices could work just the opposite, where an outside electrical current could power the pump and alter how quickly ions are pumped into or out of a cell. That could have dramatic effects.

For instance, instead of using drugs to block the release or uptake of various drugs or neurotransmitters, scientists could change the electricity regulating the ion pump, which would then change the amount of the drug or molecule inside, or outside, the cell.

Other groups have tried to mix man and machine before, said Itamar Willner, a scientist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but none have achieved this level of intimacy.

"Previous students used enzymes that were not incorporated into membranes in the transistors," said Willner. "In this case, an enzyme that usually works in the membrane was linked to carbon nanotubes."

The new enzyme-transistor link could help eventually monitor and even treat diseases and conditions, said Willner.

Some of the most obvious medical conditions the embedded transistor could help study, or alleviate, are toxins and poisons. Many of these chemicals puncture cell membranes and cause the cell's inner fluid, or cytoplasm, to leak out, essentially bleeding the cell to death. Other toxins create ion imbalances inside the cells, which can cause paralysis and other conditions.

If the cells could be encouraged to pump the necessary ions into or out of the cell that could help treat a specific condition. Though any actual treatment based on this technology is still years away, said Willner.

"We don't want to just sense things, we also want to treat them," said Willner. Clinical applications may still be years away, but the new research is the most intimate link between life and machines that has yet been created.
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Post by Freitag »

Artificial tactile skin is here!

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre68b ... rtificial/
Artificial "skin" materials can sense pressure

By Julie SteenhuysenPosted 2010/09/12 at 1:01 pm EDT

CHICAGO, Sep. 12, 2010 (Reuters) — New artificial "skin" fashioned out of flexible semiconductor materials can sense touch, making it possible to create robots with a grip delicate enough to hold an egg, yet strong enough to grasp the frying pan, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

Scientists have long struggled with a way to make robotic devices capable of adjusting the amount of force needed to hold and use different objects. The pressure-sensitive materials are designed to overcome that challenge.

"Humans generally know how to hold a fragile egg without breaking it," said Ali Javey, an electrical engineer at the University of California Berkeley, who led one of two teams reporting on artificial skin discoveries in the journal Nature Materials.

"If we ever wanted a robot that could unload the dishes, for instance, we'd want to make sure it doesn't break the wine glasses in the process. But we'd also want the robot to be able to grip a stock pot without dropping it," Javey said in a statement.

Javey's team found a way to make ultra tiny "nanowires" from an alloy of silicon and germanium. Wires of this material were formed on the outside of a cylindrical drum, which was then rolled onto a sticky film, depositing the wires in a uniform pattern.

Sheets of this semiconductor film were then coated with a layer of pressure-sensitive rubber. Tests of the material showed it was able to detect a range of force, from typing on a keyboard to holding an object.

A second team led by Zhenan Bao, a chemical engineer at Stanford University in California, used a different approach, making a material so sensitive it can detect the weight of a butterfly resting on it.

Bao's sensors were made by sandwiching a precisely molded, highly elastic rubber layer between two electrodes in a regular grid of tiny pyramids.

"We molded it into some kind of microstructure to incorporate some air pockets," Bao said in a telephone interview. "If we introduce air pockets, then these rubber pieces can bounce back."

When this material is stretched, the artificial skin measures the change in electrical activity. "The change in the thickness of the material is converted into an electrical signal," she said.

Eventually, the teams hope artificial skin could be used to restore the sense of touch in people with prosthetic limbs, but scientists will first need a better understanding of how to integrate the system's sensors with the human nervous system.

Javey's artificial skin is the latest application of new ways of processing brittle, inorganic semiconductor materials such as silicon, into flexible electronics and sensors.

Earlier this year, a team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena devised a way to make flexible solar cells with silicon wires that are thin enough to be used in clothing.
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Post by Freitag »

New word of the day "neurophotonics".


http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/18/smu- ... us-system/


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The Department of Defense and Southern Methodist University have teamed up to develop prosthetics that use two-way fiber optic communication between artificial limbs and peripheral nerves to essentially give these devices the ability to feel pressure or temperature. The technology is called neurophotonics, and it will someday allow hi-speed communication between the brain and artificial limbs. But that's just the beginning -- the work being done at SMU's Neurophotonics Research Center might someday lead to brain implants that control tremors, neuro-modulators for chronic pain management, implants for treating spinal cord injuries, and more. And since we can't have a post about DARPA-funded research without the following trope, Dean Orsak of the SMU Lyle School of Engineering points out that "[s]cience fiction writers have long imagined the day when the understanding and intuition of the human brain could be enhanced by the lightning speed of computing technologies. With this remarkable research initiative, we are truly beginning a journey into the future that will provide immeasurable benefits to humanity." Truly.
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Post by Freitag »

This is a really good survey of the current state of implantable technology.

http://www.hplusmagazine.com/editors-bl ... ybernetics
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