1.MIT’s AMI improves sensation, control of Prosthetic Limb:
Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have invented a new neural interface and communication paradigm that is able to send movement commands from the central nervous system to a robotic prosthesis, and relay proprioceptive feedback describing movement of the joint back to the central nervous system in return. This new paradigm is known as AMI i-e agonist-antagonist myoneural interface. It involves a novel surgical approach to limb amputation in which dynamic muscle relationships are preserved within the amputated limb.
2.Hands with Eyes – Hand that Sees offers new hope to amputees:
A new generation of prosthetic limbs which will allow the wearer to reach for objects automatically, without thinking – just like a real hand – are to be trialled for the first time. Led by biomedical engineers at Newcastle University , the bionic hand is fitted with a camera which instantaneously takes a picture of the object in front of it, assesses its shape and size and triggers a series of movements in the hand.
3.Amputee Controls Individual Prosthetic Fingers, like Luke Skywalker’s bionic hand in Star Wars:
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created an ultrasonic sensor that allows amputees to control each of their prosthetic fingers individually. It provides fine motor hand gestures that aren’t possible with current commercially available devices. This prosthetic arm is powered by ultrasound signals. By using this new technology, the arm can detect which fingers an amputee wants to move, even if they don’t have fingers.
4. E-Skin Brings Sense of Touch, Pain to Prosthetic Hands:
Amputees often experience the sensation of a “phantom limb”—a feeling that a missing body part is still there. That sensory illusion is closer to becoming a reality thanks to a team of engineers at the Johns Hopkins University that has created an electronic skin. When layered on top of prosthetic hands, this e-dermis brings back a real sense of touch through the fingertips. Made of fabric and rubber laced with sensors to mimic nerve endings, e-dermis recreates a sense of touch as well as pain by sensing stimuli and relaying the impulses back to the peripheral nerves.
5.Low-cost Prosthetic Foot mimics natural walking:
MIT engineers have developed a simple, low-cost, passive prosthetic foot that they can tailor to an individual. Given a user’s body weight and size, the researchers can tune the shape and stiffness of the prosthetic foot, such that the user’s walk is similar to an able-bodied gait. They estimate that the foot, if manufactured on a wide scale, could cost an order of magnitude less than existing products.
6.Ocumetics Bionic Lens could give you vision 3 times better than 20/20:
Dr. Garth Webb, an optometrist in British Columbia, canada has invented the Ocumetics Bionic Lens for giving perfect vision to the patients with vision problems. This Bionic Lens will improve your vision three times better than 20/20 vision . That means, If you can just barely see the clock at 10 feet, when you get the Bionic Lens you can see the clock at 30 feet away The custom-made lens, folded like a taco in a saline-filled syringe, would be injected in an eye, where it would unravel itself within 10 seconds.
7.3D-printed ‘bionic skin’ could give robots the sense of touch:
Engineering researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a revolutionary process for 3D printing stretchable electronic sensory devices that could give robots the ability to feel their environment. The discovery is also a major step forward in printing electronics on real human skin. Putting this type of ‘bionic skin’ on surgical robots would give surgeons the ability to actually feel during minimally invasive surgeries, which would make surgery easier instead of just using cameras like they do now. These sensors could also make it easier for other robots to walk and interact with their environment.
8.Scientists create artificial Foam Heart:
Cornell University researchers have developed a new lightweight and stretchable material with the consistency of memory foam
that has potential for use in prosthetic body parts, artificial organs and soft robotics. The foam is unique because it can be formed and has connected pores that allow fluids to be pumped through it.
9.Use of Prosthetic Hands becomes Easier with New Technology:
Researchers from NC State University and the University of North Carolina have developed new technology for decoding neuromuscular signals to control powered, prosthetic wrists and hands. The work relies on computer models that closely mimic the behavior of the natural structures in the forearm, wrist and hand. The technology could also be used to develop new computer interface devices for applications such as gaming and computer-aided design (CAD).
10.Researchers 3D print prototype for ‘Bionic Eye’:
A team of researchers at the University of Minnesota have, for the first time, fully 3D printed an array of light receptors on a hemispherical surface. This discovery marks a significant step toward creating a “bionic eye” that could someday help blind people see or sighted people see better.
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