Bionic Limbs 'Learn' to Open a Beer
Andrew Rubin sits with a Surface tablet, watching a white skeletal hand open and close on its screen. Electrodes on his arm connect to a box that records the patterns of nerve signals firing, allowing Rubin to train a prosthetic limb to act like a real hand. “The software recognizes the patterns created when I flex or extend a hand that I do not have.” The 49-year-old college professor from Washington, DC, drives several times a month to Infinite Biomedical Technologies, a Baltimore startup company that is using deep learning algorithms to recognize the signals in his upper arm that correspond with various hand movements. But Infinite and another firm are taking advantage of better signal processing, pattern recognition software and other engineering advances to build new prosthetic controllers that might give Rubin and others an easier life. Through many hours of training on the company’s tablet app, the device can detect the intent encoded in Rubin’s nerve signals when he moves his upper arm in a certain way.
Bionic arm combines intuitive motor control, touch and grip for the first time
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