While prosthetic limbs have been around for a while, some designers are taking these limbs to the next level.
An orthopedic company from Iceland has developed a new bionic leg that can respond to your thoughts. The company, known as Ossur, has been selling orthopedic accessories for years. However, it wanted to improve its products in a way that would make them easier to use. That's why Ossur has developed a new kind of mind-controlled artificial limb.
According to Ossur, these new limbs rely on surgically-implanted myoelectric sensors, (IMES for short) in the patients' residual muscle tissue. These sensors could detect what movement the mind wants the particular limb to do, then send a message to the limb's receiver, which would perform the action upon request.
In other words, the IMES lets the user control the limb with their thoughts, just like a normal limb. After developing the IMES powered leg, Ossur asked two of their customers to test out the new IMES-powered limbs for them. And after a year of testing, both of the customers are quite happy.
Dr. Thorvaldur Ingvarsson, who headed up Ossur's bionics research, says that"The technology allows the user's experience with their prosthesis to become more intuitive and integrative." Ingvarsson also expressed that users "no longer need to think about their movements because their unconscious reflexes are automatically converted into myoelectric impulses that control their bionic prosthesis."
While Ossur's new limb is an impressive development, it isn't the only bionic limb on the market. Earlier this week, John Hopkins University unveiled its new bionic limb, which uses pattern recognition algorithms to react to thoughts.
