The latest Ossur Power Knee is just a prosthesis, but it more closely resembles a robot than any artificial limb.
Robotic hands and arms may be getting more sophisticated, but they don’t really rival what we think C3-PO would have poking out of his torso. That is until now: an European science team have been busy creating the Sensopac robotic limb, and it’s arguably the most human-like robotic limb yet. And partly that’s because its sophistication is derived from software modelled on the human cerebellum. The arm has artificial skin that can sense force and direction in detail, and its 38 motors mimic the structure of human muscles and tendons to give it a very human-like grip.
Oscar Pistorius is a sprinter with a difference: he runs on two artificial lower legs and feet fast enough that he may qualify for the Olympics. And that’s something he can now attempt, given that the Court of Arbitration for Sport has just overturned a ruling by the International Association of Athletics that had banned him from competing against able-bodied runners. All because of the specialised carbon-fibre Cheetah Flex-Foot prosthetic feet he uses, which represented an unfair mechanical advantage maintained the IAAF. So the advanced artificial limbs, designed after the shape of a Cheetah’s hind leg, were put to the test in the lab.
Researchers at Duke University have teamed up with the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Kyoto to get a monkey’s brain to control a pair of robot legs through the internet. By mapping the monkey’s brain signals while walking (through electrode measurements), Duke researchers were able to pinpoint the activation areas to specific leg movements. More »
