

Amputee controls prosthetic arms by thinking about them [video] - taf2
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9NOncx2jU0Q

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fsloth
Summary of the technique:

1\. Surgically reconfigure amputees nerves that once controlled the arm and
the hand so they are compatible with their pattern recognition scheme

2\. Teach the pattern recognition system to respond to patients neural stimuli
to said nerves : “We use pattern recognition algorithms to identify individual
muscles that are contracting, how well they communicate with each other, and
their amplitude and frequency,” Chi explained. “We take that information and
translate that into actual movements within a prosthetic.”

3\. Attach the robotic hands to the patient.

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HackinOut
Despite the cool robotics and brain control (nerves to be exact), seeing that
guy do the one practical thing, picking up a glass and trying to bring it to
his lisp after 40 years, was actually the coolest thing.

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robg
Amazing that 15 years ago I was watching primates do these things and more
with neural implants. Perfect instance where the idea is amazing and
revolutionary but the reality is so hard it takes decades if not longer to
accomplish.

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innguest
The reality is if we dumped as much tax money on it as we dump on spaceships
landing on comets, we'd be all done with this in 1 year and headlines like
this would be old news.

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randyrand
What would be the point of dumping tax dollars into amputee research?

We invest in space because we think it is worthwhile, and still mostly
unprofitable (that's changing).

That is not the case with prosthetics. It makes sense to let the market decide
how much to invest in this research acoording to the size of the amputee
prosthetic market. It frees up the government to work I. Other things and gets
rid of the HUGE inefficiencies when it comes to the government trying to
accomplish anything.

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DanBC
Many amputees are (ex) military. The government probably should fund cost of
treating amputees if they lose limbs in service of their country.

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fsloth
Holy crap, after 40 years without hands he can pick objects and manipulate
them with relative dexterity.

I wonder could the hands be scaled up to a point where he could drive a "man-
dozer" and be a one man construction company :)

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orthecreedence
It must be incredibly hard to remember how to even use your arms 40 years
after not having them. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I would expect that
sooner or later the brain would start to rewrite the paths devoted to arm
movement to something else. Looks like this guy made a ton of progress though.
Very encouraging to see.

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nchelluri
Ok, that was fucking cool.

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opendomain
This is amazing.

There is no direct connection to his brain, so he may not b controlling the
arms by just 'thinking'. It looks like almost using smaller muscles to control
the arms, but using the nerve connections themselves. Also, he controls one
pivot per action - so he moves the shoulder, then the forearm, then the hand,
then the fingers with rests between each step.

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HackinOut
This is the one thing I didn't get: if it's mapped to nerves why can't he do
two pivots at a time? Is it a limitation of the robotics?

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bpicolo
It's mapped to the base of nerves. He doesn't have the entire nervous network
that an arm usually has.

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netcan
Here is what I keep thinking when I see these prosthetics.

After you train to control the arm while it's attached, can you more it around
regardless of it being actually connected to your shoulder (assuming of course
the sensors stay in place) and move it around like thing.

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mparlane
Must not have watched the video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NOncx2jU0Q#t=250](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NOncx2jU0Q#t=250)

This part of the video shows the arms are not attached. I'm sure he was
trained to use the arms when they were not on him first.

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fantanfantan
I am excited for these kinds of technology for non-amputee use too:
[https://www.thalmic.com/en/myo/](https://www.thalmic.com/en/myo/)

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koevet
Received a myo yesterday. Pretty awesome hardware execution - aka it works
consistently - but the "things" you can do out-of-the-box are fairly limited.
I will dig into the SDK over the weekend.

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milesf
My lifelong dream of becoming Dr. Octopus is one step closer :)

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ciokan
One (close) day such things will be in fashion magazines

