Robot artificial hands that can be moved freely up to the fingertips by "just thinking" will be developed

A prosthetic man who can move to the fingertip just by thinking that a person who has lost his arms wants to move like thisJohns Hopkins UniversityOn December 17, 2014, a man without a first shoulder first succeeded in putting a prosthetic hand up and down the arm and holding a cup.

Amputee becomes first to simultaneously use two APL Modular Prosthetic Limbs | Hub
http://hub.jhu.edu/2014/12/17/amputee-makes-history


The way the robot prosthesis is actually moved can be confirmed from the following movie.

Amputee Makes History with APL's Modular Prosthetic Limb - YouTube


Les Baugh said that he was caught in a machine 40 years ago and lost his shoulder. I participated in the research from June 2014, underwent surgery to attach the prosthesis of this time and made it possible to send instructions from the shoulder to the arm and hand to the nerve. By this surgery, just thinking "I want to move the arm like this" will make it possible to move the robot prosthesis.


Albert Chi, a medical director of the following men, is a research doctor. The prosthesis uses a pattern recognition algorithm and recognizes how individual muscles are communicating instructions, how often and how much the degree is. That signal is transmitted to the robot artificial hands to actually create "movement".


Mr. Baugh who recovered his body after a while visited the Applied Physics Lab (Johns Hopkins University) Applied Physics Lab (training of applied physics) and conducted robot prosthetic training. First of all, a transparent socket that supports the prosthesis is attached to the body.


The socket also makes it possible to transmit commands from the shoulder nerve to the prosthesis.


Next, attach the chord to the body ......


With the prosthesis not wearing, check the movement of the arm with virtual reality.


And, as a final step, wearing a robot prosthesis.


Just thinking to spread out the palm ... ...


You can bend your fingers.


A state with the palm facing down.


From here it is easy to twist your wrist and turn your palm upward.


Furthermore, it is also possible to bend both arms at the same time.


Baugh grabbing the cup on the shelf.


Move it to the upper shelf.


It seems that you can operate it even from a remote place with the robot prosthesis not wearing.


Baugh who moved the cup and the ball with the artificial arm said "It seems that it came to another world".


Mr. Baugh has become able to move the robot prosthesis with just 10 days of training, but this is a speed that can not be an existing prosthetic hand. As I was mastered on my daily behavior at a speed that exceeded expectations, it seems that the initial goal of "moving both arms at the same time" has been achieved smoothly. Mr. Chi who researched and said, "We are still in the starting point, it's like the early stages when the Internet was created, for example, with great potential spreading in front of us. In 10 years from now, this technology will make tremendous progress. "

The next step is to observe how the robot artificial intelligence blends into his life by asking Baugh to live with a prosthetic hand.