
Paralysed man moves in mind-reading exoskeleton - pmoriarty
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-49907356
======
pweezy
It must feel odd and incredibly difficult to control an exoskeleton (or any
motion restoring device) without any proprioceptive or tactile feedback. I
imagine it's like having someone else move your limbs, or for a paraplegic,
like using your arms to move your legs.

If we find a way to trigger those sensations, perhaps with separate brain
implants, it would be a huge breakthrough and make learning to control the
device much faster.

I'm sure that's far from an easy task, though.

~~~
bobbygoodlatte
You might enjoy this TED talk from last year from Hugh Herr. He and MIT
developed an interface that allows proprioceptive sense in a bionic limb.
Pretty wild stuff.
[https://www.ted.com/talks/hugh_herr_how_we_ll_become_cyborgs...](https://www.ted.com/talks/hugh_herr_how_we_ll_become_cyborgs_and_extend_human_potential/transcript)

~~~
Intermernet
I love Hugh Herr. I first encountered him in the 90s when he was doing custom
prosthetics for rock climbing and then I lost track of his work. Next thing I
know he's doing stuff like the talk you linked to. He's truly inspirational,
and humbling in what he achieves.

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vegetablepotpie
I worked in a lab over the summer to develop non-invasive methods to give
quadriplegics control over a robotic arm. Although implants have a ways to go,
this development is encouraging. I'm excited to see where this technology will
go, hopefully it will lead to giving quadriplegics more autonomy in their
lives.

~~~
ilaksh
Are you familiar with Neuralink? They showed a video with like 1000
connections.. vastly more than this example.

~~~
vegetablepotpie
Yes, it’s really interesting and my futurist friend theorizes about the
possibilities when we hike. The neuroscientists I work with are skeptical of
Neuralink because there isn’t a precedent to do invasive surgeries on healthy
patients. I hope the company is successful, their work will teach us a lot
about the brain. We’re trying less invasive, non surgical methods, to control
appendages that we anticipate will be cheaper and lower risk.

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avar
Is there a reason to make these sorts of exoskeletons human-shaped for the
purposes of helping the disabled?

Isn't it easier to make something like a centaur where there's a second set of
rear legs? That would also lower the center of gravity since the backpack on
this one could be the "torso" on the centaur. Balancing something on four legs
is also much simpler.

That sort of platform could also trivially turn into a wheeled vehicle by
having sets of wheels on each of the four legs that could rotate into place.
That would be much more power-efficient than walking in most urban settings.

~~~
probably_wrong
My guess is that it's not only about "external" improvement but also
"internal".

Externally, your centaur design is more stable and probably easier to design.
It would also allow you to do some (highly specific) tasks that a boring, two-
legged human could not do. Like Aimee Mullins said in her TED talk[1], this
would make you not so much "disabled", but rather "super-abled".

Internally, however, you also want those using the exoskeleton to regain their
feeling of belonging. That is, you don't want the to "just" walk - you also
want them to walk _exactly like everybody else_. To quote from this book [2],

 _" You don’t always feel inferior, mostly just out of place. Sometimes
though, you feel a pang in your chest, a bit like a short, sharp stab. You
know what it is instantly…_

 _It 's there to remind you – you’ll never be quite the same, never on the
same level, you’ll never have quite the same opportunities, the same
privileges, the experiences and the rites of passages everyone else takes for
granted._

 _(...) Like when you go shopping and people stare. Funny thing is, you get
used to this one over time, it affects you far less than it does your friends.
They hate it and stare back or make comments – “why are people so rude, you’re
not a circus animal?”. You feel like saying “actually, I am” but it wouldn’t
help, you just want to shop. "_

[1]
[http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics](http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics)

[2] [https://disabilityhorizons.com/2015/09/the-truth-about-
being...](https://disabilityhorizons.com/2015/09/the-truth-about-being-
disabled-or-how-it-feels-to-be-an-outsider/)

~~~
avar
I'm not bound to a wheelchair, so maybe I'm full of it, but I'd think the
feeling of not belonging among paraplegics has to do with not being able to
fully partake in society.

Go to a party and your default is to make eye contact with people's crotches
and them literally looking down on you (dumb as it is, this is important to us
social primates), a simple set of stairs being an insurmountable obstacle,
being excluded from "able-bodied" activities etc.

As compared with being in a centaur suit, now you're a superhero. "Hey Bob,
you can lift half a ton, can you help me with this?". Making good fun of your
out of shape "able-bodied" buddies on a hike as you carry all their backpacks
on your back etc.

Of course much of that could also be said about a bipedal suit, but those are
presumably harder to develop, and need to be more compact, so power storage is
more of an issue, and can't as naturally transition to wheeled travel without
all the issues with a Segway. It would be unfortunate to delay deployment of
these systems because of some perceived prejudice against four or eight-legged
systems.

People at the supermarket already wear what could be called "unnatural"
partial exoskeletons today. They're just called wheelchairs or mobility
scooters, I don't see how a working legged contraption that doesn't pass for
vanilla human when clothed would make much of a difference.

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PetitPrince
Original paper:
[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422\(19\)30321-7/fulltext)

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mschuetz
I can't wait for exoskeletons in entertainment and recreation. Imagine sumo,
rugby, boxing, etc with actual superhumans powered by exoskeletons. Traffic
jams on Mt Everest are going to be weird. Construction is going to be a lot
more productive.

I'm confident it will be the "next big thing" at some point, maybe 10-30
years.

~~~
peterwoerner
BMW is already using them for factory workers:

[https://exoskeletonreport.com/2017/03/mw-group-harnesses-
the...](https://exoskeletonreport.com/2017/03/mw-group-harnesses-the-
potential-exoskeleton-technology/)

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clay_the_ripper
“But when he thinks "walk", it sets off a chain of instructions to move his
legs”

Not to poo poo this achievement but the ability to imitate a single, non-
specific command with a brain implant has been around for years (decades?)
now. Sounds like He is issuing a single command and then “walk” command is
controlled by the computer. Not as though he is independently moving each leg.
Still cool, if not as groundbreaking as it may seem.

~~~
icebraining
While full control is obviously better for some things, I wonder if overall
this isn't better. It would reduce the training from having to adapt your
brain to control a foreign body, to just issuing simpler commands, and might
be safer too. Imagine using Atlas[1] as the exoskeleton, you just think about
going forward and it navigates the terrain for you.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LikxFZZO2sk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LikxFZZO2sk)

~~~
ufmace
It seems like you'd lose a ton of utility like that. How cold you maneuver in
tight spaces without the ability to move each leg/foot in a particular way and
put the in a particular place? Much less run, jump, dance, play sports, etc.

~~~
icebraining
Did you watch the video? Atlas can run and jump, even do backflips. Tight
spaces shouldn't be much of a problem either, as long as the software knew the
size of the exoskeleton + human.

Yes, activities where the goal is the movement itself, rather than getting
somewhere, would be hampered. My point is that getting that precise control
may be much harder, both technologically and in terms of user training. Maybe
a gradual approach could be implemented.

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aurbano
This is absolutely mind blowing!

Although I can't help but nitpick on this:

> What do experts think?

> Prof Tom Shakespeare, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
> Medicine [...]

How is a professor in a Hygiene and Tropical Medicine school relevant? I feel
like if you're going to get an expert's opinion you should at least find
someone in a related field, like a neurosurgeon or neuroscientist...

~~~
gadders
He's a wheelchair user, if that makes any difference:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Shakespeare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Shakespeare)

//edit// He is also currently Professor of Disability Research in the medical
faculty at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and a member of the Nuffield
Council on Bioethics.

~~~
aurbano
That makes a lot more sense - they should probably include those credentials
instead of the place where he teaches, the way it is written now makes it seem
like he isn't a subject matter expert...

~~~
robocat
> they should probably include those credentials

I can't think of a good way to present credentials beyond name and position.

Adding extra information can lead to wierdities: "a disabled researcher" or "a
white researcher" or "an elderly researcher".

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aiexplorations
I'm guessing that there are some ideas from signal processing and statistical
learning at use here for enabling the robotics behind the prosthetics. Would
anyone happen to have a good reference or article that illustrates how this
kind of interface is built?

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eeZah7Ux
On a side note, it's amazing how difficult it is to interface directly with
the human brain.

We can place 300 million transistors on a squared millimeter of silicon.

Yet, when interfacing with neurons we can barely achieve dozens of usable
contact points over a very large area.

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ryanmercer
The first thing that came to mind "Dead or alive, you're coming with me!".

I love seeing the science fiction of my youth starting to become a reality,
obviously this is a far cry form Robocop but it's still a very impressive
enabling technology.

Some years ago (5~) the Indiana State Museum had a Star Wars exhibit with a
display of various prosthetic devices both from the Star Wars franchise and
real life with video clips playing at several of them. One of the clips was a
man talking about how he invented the prosthetic on display as a direct result
of watching Luke get his new hand as a kid and wanting to make it a reality.
That kinda stuff is awesome.

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erikig
This seems like a great use case for a variant of Boston Dynamic's Atlas robot
especially given that robots ability to self balance, handle obstacles and
even do parkour.

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HNLurker2
I had a friend who tried to kill himself and instead was paralyzed from waist
down from jumping from building (3th floor I remember or something). This is
hopeful

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ubermonkey
I can't believe Ctrl-F "scalzi" didn't turn up a reference to LOCK-IN.

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midnitewarrior
Is this the RoboCop prequel?

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robofanatic
Surprised that no one raised privacy issues. Now technology can eavesdrop on
what I am thinking? Give me a break!

