Robotic Limbs : Not a distant dream anymore

With the advancement of technology, we have come to a phase where there’s nothing that a disabled man cannot do. Almost every organ is having a substitute available, apart from the brain of course (AI is totally a different thing here). Science is equipping us with technologies that can make a disabled man totally fit for normal and healthy life – thanks to the advancement in the robotic prostheses.

Robotic prostheses are when a robotic gadget acts an as prosthetic limb – for example, we have a robotic arm named Luke available. It has been developed by a firm called Deka. Luke has even been approved by FDA for sales and that’s a great leap in robotic prostheses since there are only a few robotic limbs commercially available – most of them are still in R&D phase or are just available on blueprints. Luke is a mind-controlled robotic arm that can facilitate even very complex handling of things like – tossing a coin, eating from chop-sticks, grabbing small objects, unlocking doors using keys etc. Luke is the first mind-controlled robotic arm approved by FDA.

Humans have been trying to make prosthetic limbs for a long time, the first know prosthetic limb is “Cairo Toe” that dates back to 950BC. Starting from Cairo Toe and now to robotic prostheses, the world has witnessed a phenomenal growth. For an enabled man, all these tasks might not matter that much because he has never felt that sense of frustration when one fails to even toss a coin or handle a spoon to feed himself. Well, now all that can be a thing of past, just because of the robotic arms like Luke.
Luke works for a fact that even when the limb is absent, the nerve endings that were meant to move the limbs still fire neurons and these neurons are then accepted by the sensors on the electrodes which then act accordingly and cause the desired motion – just like a normal limb motion.

In the case of Deka, these nerves are moved to already working muscles like the foot muscles and the hand movement is then conducted by the firing of neurons in the foot so that’s how Luke works. Another great thing about Luke is, it’s almost all wireless – the electrodes don’t have wires so you don’t have to worry about breaking things.

There are open source projects like Open Bionics that support open source development of bionic limbs and then there are other companies too who are developing these robotic prosthetic limbs with cutting edge technology. One of those companies is Steeper that is based in the city of Leeds. Steeper claims to have made the most advanced bionic hand ever and they call it be bionic. Bebionic can do over 14 types of grips.

The biggest drawback that these highly intelligent limbs have is their cost. Most of the bionic limbs – be it the robotic arms or the robotic legs, they cost a massive sum of money. Although open source projects of bionic prosthetics are way cheaper but they are not organized and hence they lack popularity. So, summing it all up we must focus on cutting down the cost of these already available technologies and make them even better.