Major BIONICS advances....

[Dr Mordrid]

http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060424_bionic_arm.html

Wireless Bionic Arm Would Feel Real

By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Managing Editor
posted: 24 April 2006
11:25 am ET

Work on artificial arms that would be controlled by the human mind is ramping up thanks to a helping financial hand from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

DARPA announced in February that it would pour $55 million into a prosthetic arm research project to be led by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. The work will be spread among more than two dozen institutions.

Today, the University of Utah announced a $10 million contract, as part of the overall project, to develop a "peripheral nerve interface." The implanted device would relay nerve impulses wirelessly from what’s left of a limb to a computer worn on the person’s belt. From there, the signals would be routed to a bionic arm and back to the remainder of the amputated arm, where they would then flow naturally back to the brain.

Researchers at the university have already developed a pill-sized array with 100 tiny electrodes. Now they’ll seek to improve on the arrays so they can be implanted in up to four of the major nerves in a patient’s residual arm. Each electrode would communicate with a small number of fibers within a nerve.

"Imagine an artificial arm that moves naturally in response to your thoughts, that allows you to feel both the outside world and your own movements, and that is as strong and graceful as an intact, biological limb," said bioengineer Greg Clark, the University of Utah's principal investigator on the project. "That's what our researchers, teaming with others around the world, are setting out to achieve.”

Over the next four years, other scientists will build a next-generation mechanical arm designed to work like the real thing.

Existing prosthetic limbs can typically manage just one movement at a time.

"The new arm will take the signals that go to all the different arm muscles at once, and all the person has to do is think about natural movement and the arm will respond in a natural way,” Clark said. “We're basically listening in on what the nervous system would be telling the natural arm, and translating that into signals that will move the artificial arm in the same way."

Wow....Bluetooth on steroids

Dr. Mordrid

[Claymonkey]

That's very neat. I hope they can make it happen. Imagine how bad a software glitch could mess you up though. All of a sudden a computer bug or glitch makes your fake hand feel like it's on fire, or pounded repeatedly with hammers.

[cjolley]

Speaking of pounding.
Let the pron industry get their hands on this and those investment amounts will look like chump change.

[KvHagedorn]

Anyone else see William Shatner's show on the History Channel last night? They were comparing some recent technological advancements with the vision of the Star Trek series. Interestingly enough, the scary part was reflected upon as well. The Borg are us. I forget his name but they interviewed one scary individual who could have been a megavillian in some recent superhero film. He has implants in his brain to communicate with the internet, and says that people who don't have these 20 years from now will be obsolete!?!

How twisted we have become.. the spirit should always be valued above all else.

[Wombat]

He has implants in his brain to communicate with the internet, and says that people who don't have these 20 years from now will be obsolete!?!

How twisted we have become.. the spirit should always be valued above all else.

He's probably right. But what does our physical appearance/equipment have to do with the value of the spirit?

[KvHagedorn]

Well, if you were to be cursed with a very long life, you might not recognize your great great grandchildren as anything but a cog in a communal mind, like the Borg.

[Wombat]

Somehow, you've automatically jumped from "device that enables communication between individuals" to "device that removes individuality."

So, umm, why are you using a computer on the internet?

[Dr Mordrid]

True enough, but how about some company requiring "groupthink" at work as a condition of employment with large financial "inducements"? DARPA is also funding brain, tongue (!) and ocular implants, presumably for eventual use in/by special ops and other forces to augment their operations.

Brain/peripheral nervous sustem: bionics, comms etc., but possibly direct control of exoskeletons....which are another DARPA project. Here come the MECHS

http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrust/matdev/ehpa.htm

Ocular: presumably enhanced vision (IR, UV, night vision etc.)

Tongue: embedded sonar & other imaging;

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Researchers-Use-Tongue-as-Interface/story.xhtml?story_id=12000CIL262O

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/04/24/tongue.sight.ap/index.html

Want some interesing reading? Try DARPA's strategic plan as posted on their site;

http://www.darpa.mil/body/strategic_plan/strategic_text.htm

Dr. Mordrid

[KvHagedorn]

True enough, but how about some company requiring "groupthink" at work as a condition of employment with large financial "inducements"?

That's pretty much a given scenario. And once one does it, they all will have to, because of competition. And then once it is common practice, screw the large financial inducements. Heck, look at how advancement in corporations nowadays is tied directly to how closely one apes the ceo in thoughts and actions!

This world is not fit for living in. The saying used to be "All is fair in Love and War," but not anymore.. now it's "All is fair when it's for the good of the company."

Funny how much this absolutist capitalism reminds me of Dr. Zhivago.. where the brainwashed Reds inflict their palpable peer pressure in insisting how the private life was now dead.

[Dr Mordrid]

Back to the biological basis of this thread: the DARPA BMI program (brain machine interface).

Interestingly enough the BMI page has recently been taken down, along with those of other sensitive projects....meaning of course that they were productive enough to have "gone black". That said here's DARPA's previously posted description;

Brain Machine Interface

The Brain Machine Interface program will explore the creation of new technologies for augmenting human performance through the ability to access codes in the brain in real-time and integrate them into peripheral device or system operations. The following six areas will be addressed in this program: (i) extraction of neural and force dynamic codes related to patterns of motor or sensory activity required for executing motor or sensory activity, such as peripheral limb movements or control of a robot; (ii) determination of necessary force and sensory feedback (e.g., positional, postural, visual, and acoustic) from a peripheral device or interface that will provide critical inputs required for closed loop control of a working device; (iii) new methods, processes, and instrumentation for accessing neural codes non-invasively at appropriate spatiotemporal resolution to provide closed loop control of a peripheral device; (iv) new materials and device design and fabrication that embody compliance and elastic principles and capture force dynamics that integrate with neural control commands; (v) demonstrations of plasticity from the neural system and from an integrated working device or system that result in real-time control under relevant conditions; and (vi) biomimetic implementation of controllers (with robotics or other devices and systems) that integrate neural sensory or motor control integrated with force dynamic and sensory feedback from a working device or system. In FY 2002, projects have been selected to demonstrate the capability for brain integration into a peripheral device remotely and through a wireless interface. The program will also design, fabricate, and implement wireless interfaces to extract necessary control commands from the brain. In FY 2003, the program will extract codes related to the ability to move a peripheral device (robotic arm) and provide necessary sensory feedback.

Dr. Mordrid