Prosthetic Limbs That Can Feel

This stuff is truly incredible. However it does take us one step closer to building cyborgs like in Ghost in the Shell.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/19759/
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb08/5864

Ramen4ever said:

This stuff is truly incredible. However it does take us one step closer to building cyborgs like in Ghost in the Shell.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/19759/
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb08/5864

Click to expand...

Thta's pretty cool. hopefully they can work on the blue tooth legs some more and blue tooth arms making missing limbs a thing of the past.

Yeah, read about that a while ago. The best part is that they don't even need to do surgery for it to work, I remember reading that a normal guy could control such an arm just by having some sensors placed on his skin. It's only a matter of time before Doctor Octopus appears.

Aazealh said:

It's only a matter of time before Doctor Octopus appears.

Click to expand...

Soon enough it's going to be the lizard.

I'm a lot more curious on how compact they can make all this. Could they eventually build a cyborg out of a person?
Swapping the arm and legs is the first step. They would have to create artificial heart, lungs and all the other organs needed to sustain your brain before I'd be getting worried about full body cyborgs. If a persons torso is also artificial, then those sensory links would be directly connected to the brain and spine, inside the body.
..Like I said, Ghost in the Shell.
If they have enough funds and people working on this, I'm sure it could happen within 50 years.

Now the downside to all this is that the U.S. army would probably make some interesting enhanced prosthetics.. muscle strength would be limited to the limb.
Not to mention bulletproof limbs. Scary.

Ramen4ever said:

Now the downside to all this is that the U.S. army would probably make some interesting enhanced prosthetics.. muscle strength would be limited to the limb.
Not to mention bulletproof limbs. Scary.

Click to expand...

Nothing is bullet proof. Also IED victims are the leading people used for these experimental prosthetics.

Ramen4ever said:

I'm a lot more curious on how compact they can make all this. Could they eventually build a cyborg out of a person?

Click to expand...

Well technically we're already there. People do have electromechanical limbs. I have no doubt it'll progress further and further, but it probably will take a long time before those artificial body parts become as good or better than the originals.

Aazealh said:

Well technically we're already there. People do have electromechanical limbs. I have no doubt it'll progress further and further, but it probably will take a long time before those artificial body parts become as good or better than the originals.

Click to expand...

That is true. Think about how much more strength there is in, say, a mechanical hand, as opposed to that of a real human hand. As far as full-out cyborgs go, I'm not sure how advanced AI is at this point, although I am almost positive that if there is such a thing as highly advanced AI it is under the control of the military. Hard to say how far down the road we are from building a "Terminator", though.

slayer81 said:

I'm not sure how advanced AI is at this point

Click to expand...

Not much.

Does anyone have a video? I'd like to see how responsive the arm is. Is there a delay I wonder?

As far as I'm aware its just those two articles, however I did find one from central europe from 2001!!! they had already made the same type of prosthetic but with wireless signals instead of wires to the chest. That articles been mia since then. As for a video? No dice.
but you could give youtube a shot.

On a related note, I found this article yesterday at school while studying for AP US.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-04/building-real-iron-man

There's a video too.

Combine these exo-suits with the prosthetics controls and you might have something.

Seriously though, they think that these suits will be standard issue in 2020? Like the government is willing to spend that much to protect the soldiers asses. They don't even have body armor right now!