Bionic Ballet
She lost a leg in the Boston Marathon bombing, and he is the the MIT Professor who lost both legs in a rock climbing accident, and said “we can rebuild her.” A poignant debut at TED 2014, and an incredible video: http://on.ted.com/tllC
“One of the oldest technologies in the human timeline—the shoe—still gives us blisters. We have no idea how to attach things to our body.” Hugh Herr’s prosthetics are attached via synthetic skins. He uses an circular rig of actuators that measure the shape of the remaining stub limb and the tissue compliance at each anatomical point. Then they use fMRI to figure out precise geometry of the mixed material cuff. Where the body is stiff, the skin should be soft and vice versa. “We produce the most comfortable limbs I have ever worn.”
To connect with the nervous system, he measures electrical pulses of muscles when thinking about moving a limb. They embed this encoding in the chips of the bionic limbs.
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