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Ed Yeates ReportingThe University of Utah is getting part of a shared 55 million dollar grant to develop an incredible artificial arm that looks, feels and works like the real thing.
Sound like science fiction? This project is for real!
As we reported last May, Matthew Nagle was controlling equipment in his room just by thinking about it. Tiny electrodes implanted in his brain were sending messages to an external computer and a prosthetic limb.
But now, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - called DARPA - is asking another group of researchers to do even more, to develop a total bionic artificial arm.
Greg Clark/ University of Utah Bioengineering: "What we're trying to accomplish is an arm that works, feels, and looks like the natural thing, so that person will feel it is part of them and other people will not look at them as someone who is somehow different."
The arm will go way beyond this technology. Interfaced with nerves above the amputation. Implanted microscopic arrays, each with a hundred electrodes no bigger than this - will not only send commands to artificial muscles in the arm, but will pick up sensory messages coming back.
Clark: "If we activate the nervous system in just the way that it's normally activated in the real world, the rest of the nervous system couldn't tell the difference."
These are recorded codes from neurons sending and receiving signals from a real limb. The proposed artificial arm would recognize the same codes.
Clark: "So that when a person reaches out to touch something, they know intrinsically when they've touched it."
Feeling, articulation and grace - senses and movements all at one time, and all controlled by the amputee's own brain and nerves.
How much finesse are we talking about? An arm, hand and fingers in a prosthetic arm that could play the piano. Or strum a guitar, or thread a needle.
So the University, with its electrodes, will now team up with other groups around the world to make the prosthesis. While not the stuff of Star Wars, it may not be far from it.
The U is getting more than 10 million from that 55-million dollar contract. Research teams expect the arm will be built and working within three to four years.
