Beyond bionics: how the future of prosthetics is redefining humanity

use your arm in a sec oh woe is me life sucks six years later Here I am hopefully about developed some of the best technology for people out there the evolution hasn't stopped just because we are here we probably are becoming the first species that is capable to influence its own evolution I could have this hand look any way I want what if I don't want a hand what if I want a tentacle [Music] modern advances in the world of prosthetics are changing lives across the globe where once there was stigma amputees are now empowered and enhanced from low-cost 3d printed designs to high-tech innovations I wanted to see how access to these technologies has changed what further developments are around the corner and what ethical battles lie ahead [Music] this is Bionic actor angel giuffria angel is a congenital amputee born without her left hand we met up at her home on Louisiana's Pearl River my mom was put on bed rest a few weeks before I was born had no idea that I was gonna have one her she happened to see a program on TV no joke about the first-ever myoelectric for children bring brought into the United States she cried the whole thing right because she's pregnant these babies are giving them arms that's so great right and then two weeks later she has a baby missing I ran I'm almost go great I know where I can get her one and everyone thought she had lost it right they were like she's like these tiny little robot hands I've seen them for babies in the world to receive a myoelectric are surprisingly many doctors are still in the dark about today's prosthetics technology they just with ultrasound thought her arm was in Shannon so we didn't know till right then they were telling me that I would have to put a harness on our little girl that was controlled by a pulley then open the hook prosthetics technology has done from hooks like this to hand would live in it motion like this in the future they will look and move like this and I'm gonna tell you this biggest kind of heavy first day of school we'd stand up from the class just from when I was five years old and then I would talk about my arm I would take it off and show it to them and I thought it was so cool I never thought there was an issue with my arm and then I met kids and I met other adults and I started to realize that everyone doesn't think this is as cool as I do you know I had kids that were afraid of me I had a kid that cried when I took off my arm what kind of a toll do you think that took on you I have one hand a big thing that this one was I was tired of telling people that I had one hand we're having a conversation say we just met I the whole time in my head I'd be going did they notice yet do they notice yet do they notice yet and then they go they notice okay I should probably it up like you'd see them do this and be like okay something's wrong with her head right this was the first of the multi articulating hands it had a glove over it and I didn't like it so I took it off look how big it is yeah this was the first hand that came out with an arm like this I'd imagine it's a lot more empowering this is now mine I designed this this looks the way I want it to look so I think it helps a lot with wanting to wear the device wanting to learn to use the vise this is out there and this is okay and I think that does get rid of a lot of the stigma that's attached to it because stigma implies it's something you should be embarrassed about and we're not a cutting-edge bionic arm like angels can cost upwards of twenty thousand pounds but even people without access to such funds have options thanks to the revolution in 3d printing I paid a visit to Callum and Jamie Miller at their home in County Durham the time with a 3d printed most of it plastic except from the part where it connected all of the fingers which helps me move it all of these they can't move unless you put it there so when I do that make mention of it after finding out that the waiting list for a printed prosthetic arm was 18 months long Callum struck upon an idea some advert just popped up on my Facebook page for 3d printer 3d technology I've never dealt with it never done anything with it oh it is mesmerizing you just sit there watching it doing something gazing at it just printed something from nothing how long do you find yourself wearing that if I'm comfortable like for the first hour then I'm probably comfortable for the next five hours really sir it makes me feel emotional when I watch him doing stuff for the first time creating your own prosthetic arms at home means an inevitable fusion of the ordinary with the extraordinary this is what three months since you got the printer so what's next we've looked at the Mayo electronics which work on muscle movements those sensors ingress ooh do you think it's brought you closer together I don't think we really close and open where is Balu in McDonough Georgia I caught up with musician Jason Barnes hi Jason hey I got good thank you we we listen for the drums and just kept coming oh yeah unlike angel and Jamie Jason is an acquired amputee having lost his hand in an accident at work wrong place wrong time scenario transformer overloaded and arced a bolt of electricity into my back when it happened I was standing in a puddle of water with rubber boots on so the electricity I wasn't grounded so it couldn't pass through me and so that's what I did the damage you went in my left side of then exited through the right side of my body and I woke up in the hospital and had no idea what happened I was just remember burnt being burnt and the explosion sound sounds like it's something like blow up or like you know something happened you know and they're like no you got electrocuted you know just what I had no idea Jason doesn't remember anything we didn't even know what hospital he was in I didn't even know where he was working that day and he was just totally fun you know this eyelashes and eyebrows were singed off doctor said okay we're going to take him off to surgery and I said surgery why Amy said well because we have to splay his arm open it was horrible we talked and you know when we made the decision to amputate his arm he just kind of broke down in my arms and said mom I'm never gonna play the drums again and my life's over you know that's what he thought I was depressed beyond the normal person at that point in time I finally was like here recovering and I just got so bored one day is when I drugged the drumkit out I was like you know I'm gonna tape the drumstick to my arm and they started playing and I will never forget that feeling but like when I went out there and playing and it was just like I could still do this you know I mean like this is eternal there's no point and trying to stop Jason took me to Georgia Tech University in Atlanta where he's been working with musician and inventor Gil Weinberg on several limitations that push up the boundaries of music he wanted to and we create the motion of the wrist so he can hold the stick tight but then I ask him if he's willing to play with my ass and do something different and more by having a second stick on our Jason can create all kind of polyrhythms because one of them can play and 19 hits per second the other one can be 20 hits per second and Cueto kind of sophisticated rhythms of no humans can do and this very much bridges the biological and the technological we later figure out that with ultrasound we can actually have much more control we can try to predict finger by finger continues control each finger based on how his muscles in in the Vigilant move so that would be my pinky and then this would be my index so the image looks completely different in the ultrasound [Music] how does the ultrasound technology compared to the traditional electrode approach with ultrasound it allows for individual finger control and continuous control on top of it what is being done at the moment to improve what you have here all the hardware built into the arm - it doesn't have to be connected to a computer and everything smaller so we could eventually hopefully replace the more traditional used EMG technology there's a great deal of research going on at the moment in this field kind of the where robotics and science and medicine all kind of means but a lot of this work is perhaps a bit more invasive but potentially can yield even greater results I'm not in a position to ask Jason even though I'm sure you would say yes to inject something into his body or to implant something into his brain if anyone would do it is probably Jason but I would like a doctor and do that and will be will be excited to see what they come up with scientists at Duke University in North Carolina are working on such research with profound implications for the future of our species so this is the tiny little sensors these are wires micro wires that are implanted in the brain from where you can record the electrical signals produced by neurons this is the electronics that I plug on top of it to basically amplify future in broadcast signals Miguel Nicolelis is a Brazilian neuroscientist who rose to prominence in 2014 when his mind powered exoskeleton helped a paralyzed man deliver the first kick of the World Cup and we were showing to the world that his hope getting a paraplegic to move here we were using science in human the human spirit to do it and he did he was a humble kick it was a tiny thing compared to what he will come in the future of course but the symbolism at that moment for me I'll never forget I mean it was incredible Miguel invited me into his lab where he recreated an example of his current research for our camera we have here a wheelchair driven by the bring of the monkey that is trying to reach the location in the room where it can collect reward this monkey is imagining the kind of trajectory that it has to produce together how necessary is it that we do this research with animals I introduced this concept in 1999-2000 with two papers one in rats and running monkeys are describing what is considered today the modern configuration of a brain machine interface about 14 years later we made eight paraplegic patients walk again for the first time in a decade I think the justification is pretty obvious very clear as soon as we start doing that we realized that the brain machine interfaces could be very useful for a new generation of prosthetic devices other dangers around this technology I'm much more concerned about we mimicking our digital machines we probably are becoming the first species that is capable to influence its own evolution by what it produces our technology because we're creating complete new constraints on how humans and socialize communicate mate so we are actually creating a new pathway without even knowing is humanity increasingly complex evolutionary process got it in a neighborhood Science and Technology what kind of arm do you think you might have in 10 years time unrealistically I would you know I'd like to see a hand it's kinda almost fully functional you know since we feedback hot and cold pressure-sensitive we into the wheel Spaceballs which will send attention in the 21st century we an hour fast approaching the edge of the cyber nests of the enhanced and genetically modified this is transferable [Music] there's definitely a positive every single bad thing or negative thing that happens there's something good that comes out of her you just got to find it sometime [Music] fancy a proper bionic arm that you can feel everything just like the other hand it has like sensory feedback I'm not sure I really because I want to know how how you get it and if you need to do anything else do your honor well I suppose you'd need to have maybe even some implants in your brain and things like that I'm a just dick with the thing yeah fair enough looking at Angel now could you ever have imagined that she'd be sitting here with all Bionic limb with flashing lights we were told one day she would have every finger and you know it would happen I'm very very proud of her like I was saying when I grew up want to be just like her because she was just like I asked for she was perfect [Music] how does that make you feel I say it all the time when she's not around right did I get to talk about how much she did the median you know I don't tell her enough to her face I guess that it matters it's important and I'm so happy you are my mom and that I had you cheering me on and making me feel proud of being different and not that different was bad around my life I have people that say things Wow III like your arm better than mine or oh I might I might get one of those when you start thinking if someone's voluntarily right replacing their limbs ethics when it comes to bionics robotics AI all these things are gonna be huge I can't act up if I want to do yeah I need to make sure that we're prepared for these kind of issues because we're not going to be ready for it and then it's gonna happen how do we handle this [Music] there's going to be restrictions eventually and they're gonna say you can't do that why not you know why can't I do the things that I want people that have the need to make these modifications to their bodies again but they have the choice [Music]

Channel: The Guardian

Views: 4,136,403

Rating: 4.9416776 out of 5

Keywords: gdnpfpnewsworld, bionics, prosthetics, 3D printed hands, gdnpfpscience, gdnpfptechnology, DIY prosthetics, AI limbs, AI, angel giuffria, bionic actress, bionic actress angel giuffria, human, bionic techonology, 3D printing, artifical intelligence, robot, 3d printed arm, 3d printed hand, limbs, 3d printer, bionic man, bionic woman, bionic arm, bionic leg, biohacking, deus ex, deux ex human revolution, subaru impreza, cyberpunk 2077, robotic arm, robot arm, bionic hand, tech, limb

Id: GgTwa3CPrIE

Length: 15min 32sec (932 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 26 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Throwaway_tentacle]

what if I dont want a hand? what if I want a tentacle?

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[u/Winterplatypus]

Angel is a fairly regular redditor.

[u/lingben]

when she was talking about making the bionic arm obvious and her decorating it to make it her own, it reminded me of Japanese concept of kintsugi where pottery is repaired and there is no attempt to hide the repair, rather the repair becomes a new artistic expression

[u/stillakilla]

Can we talk about that subie that the kid's dad has though? Fucking sick

[u/[deleted]]

wow this is amazing, Tech has given people there lives back. wonderful to hear how this has change there lives from not able to able.

[u/Powerfury]

Every time I see these things I always get reminded by C.K Louis.

Edit: Louis CK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey4WSb-BVDQ

[u/RazsterOxzine]

One bionic willy pls.

[u/WMD_Supernova]

Amazing. Showing this to my son who has no lower left arm. He's very self conscious and unsure about anything to do with his arm so this has helped and more videos like this and publicity make it seem possible to educate and innovate. Amazing

[u/Celba1]

Wow some of that stuff is beyond incredible the monkey being able to control the wheelchair to go to the food just with an implant in his brain is fascinating I can't wait to see that technology advanve further you could make a completely controlable limb that theoretically could do a task without being attached to you, the implications are insane!