
New prosthetic limbs go beyond the functional to allow people to ‘feel’ again - laurex
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/new-prosthetic-limbs-go-beyond-the-functional-to-allow-people-to-feel-again/2019/12/13/ac2fac10-d4ca-11e9-86ac-0f250cc91758_story.html
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lettergram
I used to work next to a group working on feedback for prosthetic limbs. It’s
a pretty hard problem and they went through multiple methods (twisting skin,
pulling skin, electrical stimulation, etc).

They actually just released their product and honestly I’m impressed. It can
handle weight lifting to egg pinching and you can feel it:

[http://www.psyonic.co/ability-hand](http://www.psyonic.co/ability-hand)

It uses vibration. Your brain adjusts very quickly, understanding what the
sensory feedback implies after a few minutes really.

~~~
_Microft
Sensory substitution [0] is amazing. There is (was?) a research group which
created a belt that encoded the direction of north (or towards other points)
in vibrations that always pointed towards north (the target) when the user
turned. After a while, the users no longer perceived the vibrations but
acquired a sense of north as entity itself. It is said to be very helpful to
the blind as our sense of balance seems to be too imprecise for dead-reckoning
[1], so things like walking unguidedly over a fields instead of following a
track seems to be problematic. (I know no blind people myself, so I can not
say if this is true in general). They founded a spin-off company that tries to
commercialize the technology [2].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_substitution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_substitution)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning)
[2] [https://www.feelspace.de/](https://www.feelspace.de/)

~~~
glandium
I don't remember how well it worked and how far they went with the idea, but
there was a team twenty-some years ago doing touch sensory research using a
matrix of pins/dots that reacted to camera input, and attached to the back of
blind people to make them "see".

~~~
npongratz
Other research along these lines are "plotting" visual signals onto tongues.
Here's an interesting article from 2009 talking about it:

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/device-lets-
blind...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/device-lets-blind-see-
with-tongues/)

"From the CPU, the signals are sent to the tongue via a "lollipop," an
electrode array about nine square centimeters that sits directly on the
tongue. Each electrode corresponds to a set of pixels. White pixels yield a
strong electrical pulse, whereas black pixels translate into no signal.
Densely packed nerves at the tongue surface receive the incoming electrical
signals, which feel a little like Pop Rocks or champagne bubbles to the user."

It's been available in Europe since 2013, and the US FDA apparently approved
the device in 2015:

[https://www.medicaldaily.com/fda-approve-brainport-device-
wh...](https://www.medicaldaily.com/fda-approve-brainport-device-which-allows-
blind-see-tongue-re-teaching-brain-overcome-339328)

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Mirioron
I have a problem with the title of the article: I don't think this is "beyond
the functional". Being able to get some form of touch feedback when handling
things is very much a functional aspect and a pretty important one at that.

~~~
ajna91
I agree, "beyond the functional" to me implies something else like aesthetics
or design.

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chungy
Non-subscriber friendly link:
[https://archive.is/zICt8](https://archive.is/zICt8)

