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Biomedical and electrical engineers at UNSW Sydney have developed a new way to measure neural activity using light—rather than electricity—which could lead to a complete reimagining of medical technologies like nerve-operated prosthetics and brain-machine interfaces.

Professor François Ladouceur, with UNSW’s School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, says the multi-disciplinary team has just demonstrated in the lab what it proved theoretically shortly before the pandemic: that sensors built using liquid crystal and integrated optics technologies—dubbed “optrodes”—can register nerve impulses in a living animal body.

Not only do these optrodes perform just as well as conventional electrodes—that use electricity to detect a nerve impulse—but they also address “very thorny issues that competing technologies cannot address,” says Prof. Ladouceur.

He turned a crisis into an opportunity.

Brian Stanley is a living human cyborg. He has gone viral after sharing a video on social media with an eye flashlight that can light up the whole room. After losing one eye to cancer.

As Brian Stanley suggested in the video, the eye has a battery life of roughly 20 hours, and “it does not get hot.”

Continue reading “Video: An engineer produces a torch-like prosthetic for his lost eye” »

For COVID-19 sufferers who have lost their sense of smell there is the promis of a future bionic nose.

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University are building a neuroprosthetic to help those who lose their ability to smell.

A titanium robotic exoskeleton is helping an eight-year-old boy in Mexico learn to walk after being wheelchair-bound for most of his life.

The boy, David, suffers from cerebral palsy, a group of neurological disorders that surfaces during early childhood and hinders a child’s ability to control their muscle movements. In effect, it makes it extremely difficult for an affected child to walk and maintain their balance and posture.

Continue reading “8-Year-Old Boy With Cerebral Palsy Walks Using Robotic Exoskeleton” »

“This exoskeleton personalizes assistance as people walk normally through the real world,” said Steve Collins, associate professor of mechanical engineering who leads the Stanford Biomechatronics Laboratory, in a press release. “And it resulted in exceptional improvements in walking speed and energy economy.”

The personalization is enabled by a machine learning algorithm, which the team trained using emulators—that is, machines that collected data on motion and energy expenditure from volunteers who were hooked up to them. The volunteers walked at varying speeds under imagined scenarios, like trying to catch a bus or taking a stroll through a park.

Continue reading “This Exoskeleton Uses Machine Learning to Put a Personalized Spring in Your Step” »

Inspired by insects, robotic engineers are creating machines that could aid in search and rescue, pollinate plants and sniff out gas leaks.

Cyborg cockroaches that find earthquake survivors. A “robofly” that sniffs out gas leaks. Flying lightning bugs that pollinate farms in space.

These aren’t just buzzy ideas, they’re becoming reality.

Continue reading “Cyborg cockroaches are coming, and they just want to help” »

The users can effectively manipulate the prosthetics exactly like they would with an intact limb.

University of Utah researchers have developed the most advanced AI-powered prosthetics “ever created,” prompting Ottobock, the world’s largest prosthetic manufacturer, to collaborate with them to launch the project globally.

Continue reading “Utah Bionic Leg: The most advanced AI-powered prosthetics ‘ever created’” »

March 10, 2022 Benzinga — This Startup Is Creating The World’s First Mind-Controlled Prosthetic Arm — Last Call To Invest

March 10, 2022 Yahoo — This Startup Is Creating The World’s First Mind-Controlled Prosthetic Arm — Last Call To Invest

March 2, 2022 Interesting Engineering — A new artificial human arm is moving prosthetics one step closer to true bionics.