

Amputee scales 103 floors with mind-controlled 'bionic leg' - tokenadult
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/04/health/illinois-bionic-leg/index.html

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harpastum
Video showing the leg in action: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5foYR--3EiA>

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jkn
To clarify, this bionic leg is not directly mind controlled[1]. Instead, the
leg uses EMG electrodes on the tigh that record muscle activation signals,
i.e. motoneuron discharges in the tigh muscles[2]; these neurons are
presumably activated by spinal cord networks responsible for locomotion. These
are activated by brainstem networks (a part of the brain we share with the
most primitive vertebrates), which of course at some level are controlled by
the cerebral cortex. Just to say that there are quite a few layers between
conscious thoughts and the electrodes.

Still very impressive! And I think this is much more promising technology than
direct brain recordings actually.

[1] Like e.g. José Millán's wheelchair where signals are extracted directly
from the brain: [http://www.technologyreview.com/news/420756/wheelchair-
makes...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/420756/wheelchair-makes-the-
most-of-brain-control/)

[2] [http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health-fitness/zac-
vawter-w...](http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health-fitness/zac-vawter-will-
use-bionic-leg-controlled-by-his-thoughts-to-climb-chicago-skyscraper/story-
fneuz9ev-1226507899359)

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z92
The first question I asked while viewing the title was: in what time? Cause
the fact of climbing 103 floors is almost useless without a second part
telling us "in xxx hours".

The article says in 53 minutes! That was amazing speed! Two floors a minute!!

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mikeknoop
So let's say I lose a limb at some point in the future. How does one go about
applying for these "research" positions? It seems like it would be an
interesting hack to get into a mind-controlled robot limb experimental program
instead of the traditional prosthetic limb.

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tux1968
Am i the only one who was expecting to see him on the outside of the building
climbing up its face?

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prawks
I was definitely hoping for that. I mean really, which is more useful.

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Osmium
Given the current political climate, there's no way I can make a comment like
this without it sounding political, but here it goes...

It seems a shame to me that technology like this is not available to all
amputees. I can only imagine the frustration I'd feel if I lost an arm or a
leg and couldn't afford this, and had to settle for a "dumb" prosthesis
instead. And I can only imagine this problem getting worse in the future,
because this type of thing will never be able to reach the economies of scale
to make it available to "ordinary" people on their own.

In my own country, to my knowledge, this isn't yet an issue, but as technology
progresses and with budgets getting tighter it wouldn't surprise me if it
becomes one in future.

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haraball
Bionic prosthetic limbs like this is very hard to control, that's why it's
newsworthy that a man can climb 103 stairs like this. To be able to use
something like this requires lots of training and calibration, so it's not
easy to mass produce them (yet).

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Osmium
And all that training and calibration requires highly-specialised workers to
be able to help you. So it's more than just the cost of the device itself.
Even if you could mass-produce them, I imagine they'd still need a lot of
tailoring to the individual.

I actually saw someone using a motorised prosthesis for the first time
recently, and it was very impressive to watch. I'm optimistic for the future,
I just hope everyone who needs such technology can get access to it.

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haraball
Exactly. I've done some lab work on reading muscle activity signals trough the
skin, and the signals from the test subjects were very individual.

The mass produced prostethic limbs with control systems are mostly mechanical
and slow, e.g. the users are using the remaning stump of their limb to push
buttons on the inside of the casing.

To use neural networks or some other kind of machine learning to map the
muscle signals to the wanted movement for the prosthesis would be a really
interesting problem to work on.

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emilchacko
What was a fiction in i-robot (Will smiths arm) is becoming a reality.Gr8..

