Can Prosthetics Outperform Real Limbs? | Cyborg Nation

I was a very strange child I would sit in the basement no sound silence and I just stood there in rock and I'd do this for hours and hours and hours I think my parents thought I was insane but what I was doing is imagining futures imagining what life could be the next step in human evolution may not be biological but technological by merging ourselves with machines that augment and enhance our physical and perceived realities but this is no small feat I mean the human form is a product of billions of years of natural selection and that's why innovators like Hugh Herr are actually looking to nature for inspiration to bridge the gap between man and machine when I was 17 with my climbing partner Jeff Bath sir we ice climb Huntington's ravine on that Washington we got disoriented in a complete blizzard and spent the next several days trying to get ourselves out to civilization we made it within a few miles of the roadway and we couldn't walk our lower limbs were completely frostbitten completely numb luckily someone was out snowshoeing saw human tracks and we were plucked from the mountain via helicopter then I spent you know months in the hospital gangrene set in was slowly making its way on my body and it was clear that amputation was necessary about 12 months after my limbs are amputated I was climbing at the same level as I had before the accident and people started to get nervous and then I exceeded that level and started to climb walls that no one ever climbed before and then I became a threat and that happened overnight some of my climbing colleagues actually threatened to cut their own legs off to achieve the same unfair advantage as me no one actually did it the fact that I could design my body part and exceed what I had achieved before it even exceed what nature intended was very inspiring that I realized that technology has the power to heal to rehabilitate and to even extend human experience and human capability that set me on this trajectory of a tinkering of designing of climbing and then going back to the shop and whittling and carving and machining me my closet looked really funny you didn't see shoes you saw all these bizarre blends and feet everywhere so what sets Hughes legs apart from the rest most prosthetic legs are passive and as a result amputees have to use about 20% more energy when walking with their prosthetic leg Hugh and his team studied how our leg and ankle naturally work to create their bionic counterparts so our case strategy and the design of Bionic appendages is to look into nature so we studied how the calf muscle works for example and how the calf muscle is controlled by the spinal cord using neural reflexes we programmed that capability on the small computers that are underneath the show in the Bionic limb so that when I walk at different speeds and different trains it's constantly updating the stiffness and power it's providing me the motor mimics our calf muscles adding positive force to the prosthesis and that propels the body forward this is especially helpful for walking up ramps and stairs so that even though the lemmas made of tight and and all these synthetic materials it moves as if it's made of flesh and bone the value of closely respecting the biophysics is that when we fit this prosthesis to a human body there's often no training because the human body remembers how to walk that's the value of this biomimetic design approach we build our first foot ankle in 2002 so it's been a long iterative process probably thirty fundamentally different designs that led to the the banach limb as it as it exists today we're studying how the tissues in this part of my body how stiff they are we're studying how the skin moves and we then 3d print structures that emulate those tissue properties it looks like a topographical map of your residual limb and it makes for one of the most comfortable sockets available today besides the physical attachment to the prosthesis Hugh's team is working on a way to control bionic limbs more naturally they've developed legs with EMG sensors that measure and decode the electrical impulses in the muscles of the residual limb and then translate that into movement thus the user only has to think about moving their leg to activate the bionic limb I have the condition that my limbs are amputee but that condition because of great technology I have the quality of life that I'd seek extending that story across all of humanity one can imagine a world in which technologies so remarkably great that we can eliminate disability and I believe that will happen in this century the toilet years of the century there will be no disability in the world check out more episodes of cyborg nation by subscribing to the wires channel

Channel: WIRED

Views: 1,992,772

Rating: 4.9560318 out of 5

Keywords: bionic, robotics, harvard, science, technology, rock climbing, amputees, prosthetics, hugh herr, mit, mit media lab, wired magazine, wired.com, wired, bionic legs, prosthetic leg, prosthetic, prosthetic limbs, prosthetic limb, bionic limbs, leg prosthesis, bionics, biomechatronics, real cyborg, cyborg nation, advanced prosthetics, artificial limbs, cyborg, cyborgs, artificial leg, prosthesis, future prosthetics, bionic limb, robotic legs, prostetics

Id: a2z8CE2vomY

Length: 5min 44sec (344 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 04 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/the_bouncer]

The Paralympics will become the superhuman Olympics.

[u/rineSample]

"Hey, Tim, I'm going to have to call in sick for Friday. I'm getting surgery on my legs."

"Why, what's wrong with them?"

"Nothing's wrong with them, I'm just getting them replaced."

[u/JMS230]

Alright, time to start cutting off my limbs now!

[u/[deleted]]

Dildos already do. That's what my ex told me at least.

[u/[deleted]]

Prosthetics will outperform real limbs in the next decade, two for sure.

[u/ICMB94]

Would anyone here upgrade if they weren't disabled? (talking like superior legs or arms when they are superior not the current ones)

[u/superdan267]

case example: the movie I, Robot.

I can't wait either; hope the prototype doesn't cost an arm and a leg

[u/Acrolith]

This is not a very bold prediction, considering that it has already happened.

In November 2007, Pistorius was invited to take part in a series of scientific tests at the Cologne Sports University under the guidance of Professor of Biomechanics Dr. Peter Brüggemann in conjunction with Mr. Elio Locatelli, who was responsible with the IAAF of all technical issues. After two days of tests, Brüggemann reported on his findings on behalf of the IAAF. The report claimed that Pistorius's limbs used 25% less energy than runners with complete natural legs to run at the same speed, and that they led to less vertical motion combined with 30% less mechanical work for lifting the body. In December, Brüggemann told Die Welt newspaper that Pistorius "has considerable advantages over athletes without prosthetic limbs who were tested by us. It was more than just a few percentage points. I did not expect it to be so clear."

[u/magicdevil99]

I've been saying it for years. The second bionic limbs are on par or better than natural ones and the procedure is low risk I'm going to do it. I want to be Cyborg dammit!