I’ll never forget walking into kindergarten class for the first time. Not for the swarms of tiny children, not for shelves overstuffed with arts and crafts supplies, but for the giant framed picture of Terry Fox on the wall. Save for the police car following at a safe distance behind him, he is the only one on this long, sloped road, jogging in the rain. For the entire day you couldn’t have pried my eyes away from his “robot’ leg with a crowbar. At 5-years-old, it was the first time I had ever seen anyone with a prosthetic limb, and the concept of replacing human parts with machine ones has fascinated me ever since.
Over the last few decades the prosthetic industry has evolved at an incredible pace. Engineering breakthroughs combined with lightweight and flexible materials, such as silicone and carbon fiber, are accentuating comfort while increasing durability. Nano and wireless technology are now employed in vital organ assistance. The emerging and controversial field of neuroelectronics is striving and succeeding to create connections between the brain and the prosthetic limb’s movement control, and the prosthetic sockets now contain sensors which pick up on the conditions of the natural limb, information which is them transmitted directly to the medical team for evaluation and improvement. The more advanced the robotics involved in limb and organ replacement becomes, the closer to human movement the user experiences.
Arms
Improvements in body armour and advanced medicine have enable more and more soldiers to survive devastating wounds and injuries. War has created more amputees than any other force on earth, and has forced science to invent new and improved ways to get these veterans “back on their feet.” Such was the case when the United States’ Department of Defense approached Dean Kamen. They placed on the shoulders of the Lemelson-MIT Prize-winning inventor, who’s technological creations have been helping the medical community for over a decade, the task of developing a prosthetic arm which can help amputees “pick up a raisin or a grape off a table, know the difference without looking…they’re not going to squeeze it and destroy it if it’s the grape…they won’t drop it if it’s the raisin…and they’re going to be able to pick it up and put it in their mouths.” For this to be achieved, Kamen will need to invent an arm, hand and fingers with efferent and afferent signals, real-time sensory input, as well as fine motor skills. After two years of research and development, Kamen and his team developed “Luke.”
Legs
Leaps and bounds have been made in prosthesis technology since Terry’s attempt to cross Canada on his mechanical leg. In fact the Icelandic company Ossur developed the prosthetic legs that would allow paralympic runner Oscar Pistorius, aka “Blade Runner” aka “the fastest man on no legs” to break world records. The “Cheetah Flex-Foot” begins with a silicone liner, which accepts and securely embraces the skin, a complex and durable knee system which imitates natural motion, and a unique foot design made from 100% carbon fibre, an extremely flexible and strong substance also used in the aerospace industry. The legs worked so well that the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) tried to ban the use of them in able-bodied Olympic events, claiming they gave athletes an unfair advantage over runners with human legs.
The Heart
Believe it or not, the first fully implantable artificial pace maker was surgically placed inside a human being over half a century ago. Although it only lasted three hours, it paved the way towards devices which can virtually last forever, as long as the battery is replaced every 5-10 years. Artificial pace makers consist of a defibrillator, a small electrical impulse generator, and two electrodes which stimulate muscle movement in the heart to pump blood at a healthy rhythm. Carol Kasyjanski, who’s been depending on her pacemaker for over 20 years, has become the first patient to receive wireless pace maker, allowing her doctors to measure heart strength, blood pressure and heart failure from a distance, over the internet. The device received FDA approval last month, and with 600,000 pacemaker implantations a year, the wireless technology will certainly revolutionize how doctors monitor the inner working of their patients.
Robot Suit
A Japanese University has invented a robot suit that may one day render wheel chairs obsolete. The electronic exoskeleton is equipped with bioelectric sensors attached to the skin which monitor signals from the brain. At this point in development it is meant to help folks with limited muscle strength and mobility, but with further research they may be able to create suits for those who’ve been paralyzed.
Unlike exchange email hosting and online CRM which facilitate managing emails and tasks for companies, the human body is an incredibly complex system that simply cannot be duplicated through technology. At least not yet. Robotic arms and legs, impervious to pain and which are stronger and which require less energy to operate than human limbs, wireless technology inside our bodies which can alert doctors to any signs of trouble as soon as trouble arises, all this coupled with an ever increasing desire to improve mobility, functionality and comfort, and it might not be long before the human body’s reliance on machines will transfer from need to want.
The future! It has finally arrived! Now somebody sell me some badass weapon type implants.
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