Army Advancing Prosthetics
BY DAVID KRESSEL, SEPTEMBER 7, 2007
At the confluence of war and improved medical care sit the 130 U.S. veterans of the current war in Iraq who have had an arm amputated. Advances in battlefield medical care have allowed soldiers who would have died in combat to survive, but often at the expense of losing a limb or more. This is the basis for HBO's recent documentary, Alive Day Memories, which tells the story of a handful of wounded vets.
As reported in this month's Popular Science magazine, to better address this need the Department of Defense's advanced research lab DARPA has created a $55m project to improve prosthetic arms. The goal is to create a thought-controlled bionic arm that duplicates the form and function of a natural arm.
The project is already showing results, as it recently created a model that has 25 of the 30 motions present in a human arm, an improvement over the prior model that only had 5 motions. The "thought control" today comes from muscle sensors placed in the shoulder, but future improvements could include electrodes attached to nerves or the brain. The goal is to have a device ready for clinical trials in 2009.
