Chuang, Che-Kuang
It may be great news for the amputees- John
Hopkins University has already devised the world’s most advanced bionic arm
which named modular prosthetic limb (MPL) and it could almost do everything
that natural limb can do.
This bionic arm weighs nine pounds, as same
as the normal one. There are 26 individual joints, 100 sensors and 17 motors in
this complex machine. And there is a tiny high efficient computer inside which
could accept the messages from the operator’s brain and transmits them to the motors
and sensors.
It has to be carefully set up on the
computer in order to ensure it could accept the impulse from brain and correspond
to different users. When the user thinks to do something, his brain would emit
some specific pattern of impulse to the central computer in the bionic arm, then
the computer would decode and recognize each kind of patterns, make the bionic
arm move accordingly. Now the research group has virtually decoded all patterns
of the impulse from human brain and the bionic arm could almost perfectly mimic
all the movement of human arm.
Many amputees submitted their application
immediately when they heard this experiment. Johnny Matheny who came from West
Virginia was one of them. He worked in the baking trade until he lost his arm
due to cancer in 2008. He doubted this bionic arm at first-it was too much like
the natural hand and he was wondering it could work. However, after he saw how
capable this bionic arm can do, he could no longer wait to try it. The result
was like a symphony, he felt so privileged to be able to do this.
Although this arm is still too expensive to
popularize and has its own limit, such as playing instruments, but the research
group has already made a big break through. They believe that they will soon get
there one day. As the tester Johnny Matheny said: “it is not the way of future
that you could only see in science fictions, but the future is coming and you
could see it in the real world.”
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