
Prosthetic Arm From Segway Inventor Cleared by FDA - roye
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-05-09/novel-prosthetic-arm-from-segway-inventor-approved-by-u-dot-s-dot-fda
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robomartin
>DARPA has given DEKA $40 million since 2006 to develop the arm, Rick Weiss, a
spokesman for the agency, said by phone. DEKA owns the patents and commercial
rights for the device.

For some reason i continue to have problems every time I read something like
this. Taxpayers fund all kinds of research through private enterprise or
universities and all of it ends-up monetized by such entities. We even have to
pay to have access to research papers stemming from research that would not
have happened without our money. What's wrong wih this picture? Kamen has $40
million dollars of his own money. Why did we pay for it and hand over rights?
It's like hiring someone to develop a website for you and then handing over
all commercial interests on said site. Nuts.

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georgewfraser
It's actually worse than that. I did my PhD in a lab that did brain computer
interfaces as part of the same DARPA initiative. We were supposed to use the
DEKA arm but they insisted on owning all IP to come out of the research, even
if it had nothing to do with robotics. Obviously that didn't happen. DEKA is
basically Intellectual Ventures with better PR.

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dang
Url changed from [http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/10/5703444/deka-mind-
controll...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/10/5703444/deka-mind-controlled-
prosthetic-arm-gets-fda-approval) since this one appears to be a more original
source.

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roye
Agreed - thanks.

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CWIZO
Could this be used to type on a keyboard? Or if anyone knows of a hand which
would allow the wearer to do that?

I really like the general progress in this field and I can imagine in 5-10
years they will have completely functional prosthetics.

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lallysingh
AFAIK, the arm runs one of several types of gestures -- modes -- that the user
selects then controls. So It's not a general purpose hand. For typing, perhaps
it'd be better for this thing to have a USB port, and plug in as a keyboard?

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georgewfraser
At least as of a couple years ago, that was true, and the way the arm was
engineered was very deeply tied to these modes.

