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U.S. Soldiers Recipients of Newest Prosthetic Technologies

Posted by Zonk on Sun Jul 02, 2006 12:39 AM
from the more-than-meets-the-eye dept.
Robotics Hardware
plaastik writes "The next generation of naturalistic and touch-sensitive artificial limbs are being worn by U.S. Soldiers. Instead of the old velcro strap and cup these new models are fused directly to the bone and are controlled by controlled by the wearer's brain. From the article: 'Future prosthetic arms will fuse to existing bone, eliminating the need for awkward attachment systems. These more naturalistic limbs will use bionic nerves attached to natural nerves to send and receive signals from the brain. Chips embedded in the user's brain will help command artificial-muscle-activated, touch-sensitive, fully articulating hands.'"
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U.S. Soldiers Recipients of Newest Prosthetic Technologies 50 Comments More /

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  • I'm thinking these soldiers won't be playing the piano anytime soon.

  • Innovation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eightyford (893696) on Sunday July 02 2006, @12:46AM (#15644723) Homepage
    Sadly, nothing sparks innovation and technology like war and disasters.
    • So how much will $6 million get me in terms of these new bionic prosthetic limbs?

      • economies of scale (Score:5, Interesting)

        by nounderscores (246517) on Sunday July 02 2006, @02:12AM (#15644900)
        It can become cheap, once enough people go for it. I'm surprised at how many naysayers are on this forum, possibly conditioned to believe that spiderman villains are villainous because they didn't get their superpowers "naturally".

        There may be benefits to complete prosthetic bodies [wikipedia.org] which have capabilities superior to flesh and blood which would make limb regeneration a less preferred alternative.

        In the article [popsci.com] Jeffrey Morgan notes that students at Brown have pierced noses. Limbs and skins impervious to flame, cold, bullets and infection might be the next big thing in body modification [wikipedia.org]. Also, if you break your leg, you can take it down to the shop and get it fixed while the mechanic [wikipedia.org] loans you a courtesy leg to get around in.

        As for concerns to losing your humanity, it's not who you are inside, but what you do that counts. [mac.com]

        Finally, is it just me, or does everyone want to strap on a combination of the Hugh Herr Catapult [popsci.com] and the german built Powerskip mechanical jumping boot [powerskip.de] and go street racing?

        • Re:economies of scale (Score:5, Funny)

          by NickFortune (613926) on Sunday July 02 2006, @04:48AM (#15645165) Homepage
          I'm surprised at how many naysayers are on this forum, possibly conditioned to believe that spiderman villains are villainous because they didn't get their superpowers "naturally".

          It's that Otto Octavius I blame. If he'd stop knocking over banks, and work to raise awareness of the potential benefits of his research, the cybernetics field would be a lot further forward, I feel.

          There may be benefits to complete prosthetic bodies which have capabilities superior to flesh and blood

          Are you sure you're not just a Cybus Industries [cybusindustries.net] shill? John Lumic's full body prosthesis process may look impressive, but there are a few bugs in the system I'd want to see addressed before I got myself upgraded. Although his airships are pretty cool.

          As for concerns to losing your humanity, it's not who you are inside, but what you do that counts.

          Never mind the loss of individuality, I'm waiting for a design that can withstand a little man stepping out of a blue box with a flashing light on top. Until he gets that problem licked, I really can't see any future for the design.

    • Don't forget lazyness.

      As I frequently reword a well known saying, "Lazyness is the mother of invention." :)

    • Sadly, nothing sparks innovation and technology like war and disasters.

      Under the current capitalist regime, I agree. I certainly wouldn't expect Dubya to be forking out money for, say, ordinary Americans who have lost limbs and need replacements. Any suggestion of creating some sort of ( I'd better say this quietly ) public health system is met with absolute horror by the Republicans and the ruling class ... and the Democrats too. But of course soldiers are somewhat more useful than ordinary citizens, a

        • Except, of course, for creating the largest public health care segment in decades -- the Medicare prescription plan.

          It depends on which way you measure it. It might be the case that the system has the largest absolute budget, but this is spread across a very large number of people. If you look at the expenditure per capita, a very different picture emerges. The US is practically the worst in the Western world for health care. That's why the most common reason why people are put in gaol ( jail for Yanks )

  • We can rebuild him (Score:5, Informative)

    by Skidge (316075) * on Sunday July 02 2006, @01:12AM (#15644777) Homepage
    According to The Inflation Calculator [westegg.com]:

    What cost $6,000,000 in 1974 would cost $24,945,762.42 in 2005.

    It's not cheap being a . [imdb.com]
    • I really did preview that one. Twice. ;)

      That should read "It's not cheap being a bionic man [imdb.com]."

    • Re:We can rebuild him (Score:5, Insightful)

      by misanthrope101 (253915) on Sunday July 02 2006, @01:39AM (#15644834)
      I wonder if proper body and vehicle armor is cheaper than prosthetics, multiple surgeries, psychological counseling, and a lifetime of subsequent health problems. I also wonder what these soldiers lost their limbs for. Iraq and Afghanistan aren't exactly basions of freedom, are they? Yes, they'll be peaceful one day in the future, as will the entire earth when the sun runs out of hydrogen. I do realize that every time a flower blooms in Iraq it's because of American resolve and committment, while none of the death and destruction is our fault, but still, one wonders what the hell it's all for.

      • I wonder if proper body and vehicle armor is cheaper than prosthetics, multiple surgeries, psychological counseling, and a lifetime of subsequent health problems.

        If only it were so easy. Up-armoring the Humvees is no miracle cure, in fact it may hurt more than it helps [freerepublic.com].

        Besides, with the quality of explosives the other side is using, they can kill an M1! [telegraph.co.uk] Charges that cut through a main battle tank are not going to be slowed down by any amount of Humvee up-armoring.

        Speaking of which, I've wondered why

          • The trouble with bringing these people to trial is that there's no assurance that they'll be convicted. They'll look a little stupid if they hold people in jail for years, subject them to what would be known as torture if it were happening in Atlanta or NY, and then there are no charges to file. We're assuming that there is evidence, but I think that's an optimistic assumption. Some of these people were traded for bounty money--some guy brought in someone he assured us was a "big terrorist. big big" and

  • Summary is a little optimisticly misleading (Score:5, Informative)

    by onlysolution (941392) on Sunday July 02 2006, @01:14AM (#15644782)
    The summary makes it sound like prosthetics fused to the bone and controlled by the nervous impulses are here, but they certainly are not yet. Likewise haven't given superadvanced prosthetics to any wounded soliders yet either. As pointed out by the article, victims of the current war are not getting more advanced than advanced predictive prosthetics like the C-leg, which pretty much represent the latest in production prosthetic technology.
    Don't get to excited yet people, prosthetics like the summary imagines are still a long ways off.

  • Chips in the user's brain (Score:3, Funny)

    by monkeySauce (562927) on Sunday July 02 2006, @01:15AM (#15644787) Journal
    "Chips embedded in the user's brain will help command artificial-muscle-activated, touch-sensitive, fully articulating hands."

    Hope they get the programming right on those chips!

    Hey doc, sometimes when I'm typing with these artificial hands, I seem to get stuck in a loop! Is it true these are controlled by controlled by controlled by...

    Maybe they should also embed a usb socket into the back of the user's head to allow firmware upgrades.

  • Cost? (Score:5, Funny)

    by leipzig3 (528671) on Sunday July 02 2006, @01:29AM (#15644808)
    This sounds like great technology but what is this going to cost? An arm and a leg?

    Thank you, I'll be here until Wednesday. Please tip your waitress.

  • Same old crappy editing (Score:4, Funny)

    by jpetts (208163) on Sunday July 02 2006, @02:06AM (#15644893)
    and are controlled by controlled by the wearer's brain

    Well, looks like the editors need prosthetic brains...
  • getting your HMO to pay for one.
  • The soldiers get exciting new limbs instead of the boring old ones they had before.

    The Iraqis get killed and get to get their country destroyed.

    And we the taxpayers get to piss away a trillion dollars. Did you need that money? You would have just wasted it selfishly on yourself!

    I guess the only people who lose are Halliburton because they actually have to do some work. No wonder they mark up all their services 100%, who can blame them? What patriots!
        • "In the Iraq War, up to 15,000 military combaants were killed in the face of up to 4,300 civilian noncombatant deaths. During the Desert Storm conflict, 20,000 Iraqi soldiers and 3,500 civilians were killed. 68% of the munitions used in this war were precision-guided, compared with 6.5 % in 1991. I think these statistics speak for themselves."

          4300 non-combatant deaths in the Iraq war? Where in world did you get that number?! President Bush himself said (in a speech on December 12, 2005) that there were 30

  • Mixed Tense Confusion (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fbg111 (529550) on Sunday July 02 2006, @02:34AM (#15644936)
    Note to editors, keep your tenses consistent. The headline and abstract use both present and future tense, and without reading the article I can't tell whether these technologies are actually in use now, or will be in the future. It seems like just a few months ago that monkeys were controlling robotic arms with just their brainwaves, has technology advanced so quickly that we can now physically and neurologically integrate electronic machines with people? The article confuses that crucial point.

    "U.S. Soldiers Recipients of Newest Prosthetic Technologies
    The next generation of naturalistic and touch-sensitive artificial limbs are being worn by U.S. Soldiers. Instead of the old velcro strap and cup these new models are fused directly to the bone and are controlled by the wearer's brain. From the article: 'Future prosthetic arms will fuse to existing bone, eliminating the need for awkward attachment systems. These more naturalistic limbs will use bionic nerves attached to natural nerves to send and receive signals from the brain. Chips embedded in the user's brain will help command artificial-muscle-activated, touch-sensitive, fully articulating hands.'"

  • Phantom Limbs? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gareth.fletcher (855305) on Sunday July 02 2006, @02:47AM (#15644969)
    It will be interesting to see a study on the brain plasticity [wikipedia.org] of amputees fitted with these new prosthetics, similar to those done on the adult auditory map of hearing impaired patients (e.g. after sudden unilateral hearing loss).

    Do the phantom [brynmawr.edu] sensations, usually experienced by amputees, disappear after these C-legs have been fitted?

  • Feedback more important than control (Score:5, Informative)

    by DavidV (167283) on Sunday July 02 2006, @03:22AM (#15645046)
    I lost my left hand, severed below the elbow. I have been keeping an eye on advances prosthetics but thought it would be very difficult for me to control as my hand feels like it's in a fixed position so it would be hard to coordinate the output of my nerves without any feedback. The big advance talked about here is the signal coming back to the brain to make the limb feel like part of the person rather than something just hanging off, which is what prosthetics feel like to me. I have one but I never use it for this reason. Bring on the feedback!
    • When does someone stop being human [...] What of the soul?

      Perhaps you can first provide a concrete, evidence-based definition of what a soul is, then we can have an intelligent discussion about whatever it is.
       

      • Perhaps you can first provide a concrete, evidence-based definition of what a soul is, then we can have an intelligent discussion about whatever it is.

        See Plato's Phaedo, a text anyone with a university education should already be familiar with. All metaphysical investigations are not "evidence-based" in the sense that they are subjectable to the scientific method, but they are still "reasonable", perhaps even "logical".

        • Phaedo says things about the properties of the soul, but it does not attempt to determine whether there is such a thing to begin with.
        • See Plato's Phaedo...

          Okay, I scanned through the Phaedo text, [beck.org] searching for instances of the word "soul". I was unable to find a definition of the word soul, only a very long discussion about death and the body and soul. The very first instance of the word is in this section:

          "Then is it not the release of the soul from the body?
          And this is death,
          the body being released apart from the soul by itself,
          and the soul apart is released from the body by itself?
          Then is death anything else but this?"

          It appears that

        • Re:This raises the question (Score:4, Interesting)

          by tftp (111690) on Sunday July 02 2006, @01:10AM (#15644770) Homepage
          Well, if your augmented (cyborg) body never wears down then the question is moot, isn't it?

          But if you still insist, it is obvious that the soul, if present to begin with, can be only in the head, and only in the brain then. We do not have prosthetic brains yet, so there is nothing to discuss yet. When we get some decent processing capacity, then ask me again :-)

          • No, not really. Because even a theoretically unaging body would, in time, stop working. Maybe the sentience would collapse. Maybe the body would be physically destroyed. Maybe it'd just run out of harvestable energy and go out with teh rest of the temporal universe in cold-death. It would, eventually, die.

            Oh, and as the best scientific evidence shows no room for a physical soul of any weight, the soul cannot be said to exist anywhere physically. It is a spiritual object, and as a spiritual object it e
            • Oh, and as the best scientific evidence shows no room for a physical soul of any weight, the soul cannot be said to exist anywhere physically. It is a spiritual object, and as a spiritual object it exists in all parts of the body and no part of the body, so long as the body can be controled by or in turn influence the will of the soul.

              You're ignoring the much simpler explanation that it simply doesn't exist... which more than adequately explains the "no room for a physical soul of any weight [mass]".
        • That's for [insert deity here] to worry about, assuming that said deity exists (untestable). The question is moot from a human perspective. Since we cannot detect or objectively prove the existance of a soul, we can't really debate wheter cyborgs and AIs have them. If there is a god who worries about such details, he/she/it/they can work it out on their own time. The outcome of human debates will be meaningless regardless, even if we somehow guessed correctly.

          All we can ever look at are consciousness, s
    • Futurist Ray Kurzweil talks in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines [amazon.com] about these exact notions. He seems to think that consciousness itself is a sort of soul, and once humans are entirely machine--which he thinks is coming fairly soon--we will still be "human".
      • Exactly. We're human because of our physical bodies, but when we talk about being "human", we really mean being conscious entities. I'm not sure about whether I believe in the singularity like Kurzweil et. al. promote, but I have no problem with the possibility of becoming an intelligence within a artificial context at some point in my future. As for now, I don't have a terrible interest in prosthetics, but I am very interested in human-machine interfacing of increasing sophistication, which is something t
    • Ghost in the Shell takes a good look at the issued involved with cyberizaion of people.

    • Better Question: Washington's Hypcrisy? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2006, @12:57AM (#15644749)
      Here are some more disturbing questions?

      1. Why does the same American government that sends soldiers to be permanently mutilated in Iraq refuse to allow the full range of stem cell research that could, one day, re-grow the limbs torn apart by pointless, wasteful war? Why should we condemn the mutilated soldiers to a life of crappy prosthetics?

      2. More fundamentally, why does the American government send soldiers off to sacrifice their lives in Iraq when most Americans, including American politicians, refuse to make any sacrifice for the sake of that war? No one is sacrificing. Only the soldiers are sacrificing -- their lives.

      Question #2 is particularly damning. When the average American refuses to support a surcharge on gasoline (to bring its cost to $4.00 per gallon) to pay for the bloody war in Iraq, why the hell should Washington insist that soldiers sacrifice their lives? In World War II, the entire nation sacrificed for the just cause of the war effort. Clearly, we have no just cause in Iraq. Nearly no one supports the Iraq War.

      We should count most Republicans in the "no one" category. Most Republicans also refuse to support a surcharge to pay for the war. Their mouth says, "I support the war." However, their wallet says, "I oppose the war." Their wallet tells the truth.

      • 1. Why does the same American government that sends soldiers to be permanently mutilated in Iraq refuse to allow the full range of stem cell research that could, one day, re-grow the limbs torn apart by pointless, wasteful war? Why should we condemn the mutilated soldiers to a life of crappy prosthetics?

        Stem cell treatment would result in a one-off billable event which, while good for the soldier concerned, is not good for anyone else.
        By contrast, prosthetics require continual maintenance and parts rep

      • refuse to allow the full range of stem cell research

        No kind of stem cell research is blocked. Just a certain type doesn't recieve federal (as opposed to state) funding. This is due to some controversy over a philosophical question.

        More fundamentally, why does the American government send soldiers off to sacrifice their lives in Iraq when most Americans, including American politicians, refuse to make any sacrifice for the sake of that war? No one is sacrificing. Only the soldiers are sacrificing -- thei

    • Re:This raises the question (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mi (197448) <mi+slashdot@aldan.algebra.com> on Sunday July 02 2006, @01:33AM (#15644820) Homepage
      When does someone stop being human, once we can replace their body with a machine?

      There is a very funny, insightful, and interesting (and informative too) short SciFi story by Stanislaw Lem on this subject. In it the protagonist (?) — a racing car driver, or something like this — is being sued by the protheses-makers to return the parts, because he defaulted on the payments...

      Lem wrote it in Polish, and I read it in Russian, but there is, no doubt a translation available for your preferred language. Look for it. Lem is one of the greatest SciFi authors... Whatever you find (almost) will be worth reading.

      Now, in the story even half of the guy's brain is artificial (and has a slight defect, causing him to count everything he sees), which really does make the question asked by the parent meaningful. But we are not there yet, and can not replace the brains, so the answer is rather obvious...

    • What of AI then? What of the soul?

      Souls are provided by God's angels to all sentient creatures. If we manage to create an AI, we can be assured that God has given it as much a soul as an animal granted sentience, an alien species, a test-tube baby, or a child of pagans.

      Being human is irrelevant to the question. Being sentient and temporal are far more important, spiritually speaking.

    • Re:This raises the question (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pcgabe (712924) on Sunday July 02 2006, @03:42AM (#15645083) Homepage Journal
      Gah! Dilemma!

      On one hand, you're bringing religion into a discussion about technology. My initial urge is to stare at you blankly until you go away, or yell "keep your religion off of my science", or tell you that if you object you don't have to take part but you shouldn't tell other people how to live, blah blah etc etc. Most likely, I just wouldn't respond at all.

      On the other hand, you correctly used "raises the question" instead of incorrectly using "begs the question", for which I want to applaud.

      What to do, what to do....

      Anyway, your statements were:

      When does someone stop being human, once we can replace their body with a machine?

      There is an old thought experiment [web.uvic.ca] that goes something like this:

      "If you could replace a single neuron with a device that responds exactly the same way, would you be less than human? All input to that device is the same, all output is the same, for all the neurons around it, absolutely nothing has changed. Now, imagine that you start replacing every neuron, one by one. After each replacement, for the natural neurons around it, still nothing has changed. When you are finished, you have a functioning brain that continues to process all input exactly the same as before, only now it is mechanical instead of biological. Now is it less than human? If not, at which point did it change into something else?"

      It's an interesting problem, and if you are as intelligent as you seem, you can ponder it out without me contaminating your process with my opinions.

      Is it just the brain?

      Yup. I hope that wasn't a surprise.

      What of AI then?

      It depends on what you mean when you think of the term "AI". Like so many other terms, it has partially lost its original meaning due to overuse. By the very definition, though, it is artificial. A computer program designed to fool humans is not true intelligence. A computer program that emulates probable human responses is not true intelligence. Ah, but what if, similar to the above thought experiment, we could somehow copy a person's neurological responses... and put that data into a program that would simulate a complete working brain, down to the last neuron. Would =that= be true intelligence? Hmm...

      What of the soul?

      What of it? If you believe in such things, good for you. However, there has never been any scientific evidence* that such a thing exists or exerts any force over my choices or actions. So, I'm comfortable living my day to day life without such worries. YMMV.

      *For those that would respond "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" (which is a true statement), I would say "No, but it sure is an =indication= of absence." But as Carl Sagan said, "You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe"

    • Yes why not? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Why not just let those imperialistic fuckers rot in some hospital bed?"

      Here's a serious question for idiot leftist /.'ers whose hatred of America and it's current government matches that of idiot right wingers hatred of Islam and yourself:

      What are you leftist /.'ers actually doing, apart from complaining and bitching, to make things better?

      Seriously, left-leaning ideological /.'ers have turned this place into an anti-american soapbox that mirrors the intense hatred of sites like LGF and FreeRepublic,

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