Chances are you've played a game or read a cyberpunk novel that's featured
characters with super awesome bionic body parts at some point. Uh Jax from
Mortal Kombat, Adam Jensen from DSX, or Barrett Wallace from Final Fantasy, just
to name a few. And the idea of powered
artificial limbs that work just as well as real ones or even better has long
been a mainstay in fiction. But could we be getting close to making this a
reality for people who have been unlucky enough to lose an ARM or a leg? If so,
it'll have been a long time coming. False limbs and digits made from
materials such as wood, iron, and leather have been in use for millennia.
Everywhere from ancient Egypt to the Roman Republic to the high seas of the
16th century, where peg legs were famously used by pirates. But even
though prosthetics have been around a long time, for the vast majority of
their history, they didn't provide much functionality other than aesthetics
except for artificial legs that would at least allow a person to stand. And while
various people over the centuries have created designs to make prosthetics more
functional, such as rudimentary joints at the knees, the biggest advancements
have been made in the past few decades. Modern manufacturing processes have
allowed the production of artificial limbs that often look like the real deal
and also seriously improve the quality of life for the people who use them. And
computer AED design has enabled precise measurement and modeling of prosthetic
body parts customized for each patient as well as the manufacturer of
highquality joints and moving parts modeled closely after their natural
counterparts. Additionally, materials like silicone and polyvinyl carbonate
have been used for artificial skin and hair so that prosthetics don't have to
look like and or feel like cold hunks of
metal or plastic. But how do patients
actually control these things? Many prosthetics work with mechanical systems
powered by the user's own body. For example, artificial hands that can open
and shut thanks to a cable system that can be operated with simple gestures
such as moving a shoulder. Other prosthetics use myio electrics, the
electrical impulses that contract your muscles. So you'll have electrodes that
are attached to the same place as the prosthetic that can pick up these
impulses and send them to the artificial limb, which then moves according to what
the patient wants it to do. But the real excitement in the field surrounds
prosthetics that are controlled completely by thought, the same way
you'd control an original body part. In
recent years, scientists have developed sensors that can be directly implanted
beneath the skin and that interface with the nerves so that when the brain sends
an impulse to your ARM that says, "Hey, pick up that can of soda." The sensor
can send that impulse to a processor which will direct the limb to follow
your brain's orders. Cool, right? We're even seeing this technology take a step
further with sensors embedded in prosthetic hands to send signals to the
brain and restore a patients sense of touch. Just like Luke Skywalker in The
Empire Strikes Back. And this new generation of smart prosthetics doesn't
stop at artificial limbs. People who suffer from impaired vision may have
more options in the future as eye implants that project images directly
onto the retina could help patients that have suffered physical trauma. And
implants that make contact with the brain, hooked up to a small camera,
could bypass the eye entirely and provide your brain's vision center with
images from the outside world. Just don't expect anything that will let you
see through walls anytime soon. Unless, of course, you're the NSA. Speaking of
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for 30 days by going to freshbooks.com/techquicky and entering
techquicky in the how did you hear about us section. So, thanks for watching,
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