In 1974, Lee Majors played an astronaut who suffered a horrifying accident. However, he survived, and after numerous surgeries and cutting-edge technological implants, he becomes the hero known as The Six Million Dollar Man. In 2004, Claudia Mitchell suffered a motorcycle accident in which she lost her arm. However, she survived, and after some cutting-edge technological implants, she’s well on the way to becoming the first Bionic Woman thanks to the cybernetic limb she controls using only her mind, and it only cost the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago $3 million dollars!
Okay, so maybe Claudia’s bionic arm doesn’t give her super strength or the power to throw cars. However, the myolectic limb developed by Todd Kulken gives her something much more important, independence. The surgery rerouted the nerves that would have normally ended in her arm and hand into her chest. There, the bionic arm straps over her chest, connecting to those nerve terminals. When she thinks about moving her arm, those nerves are triggered and a computer within the arm moves and interprets those motions.
Simply, when she thinks about picking up keys or opening a door, she does it. Her prosthetic arm does the exact same motions she sees her phantom arm doing! It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than having a hook, as the demonstration video below shows. It won’t be long before we’ll be replacing eyes with cameras, covering those artificial limbs with realistic lab-grown flesh, and building whole cyborg people with brain tanks attached for locomotion purposes.
Tags: artificial limbs, Claudia Mitchell, posthumanity, cybernetics, artificial arm controlled by nerve impulses, artificial arm controlled by thought, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Todd Kulken, myolectric limbs, bionic arm, posthuman body, DEKA research
