Intelligent Prosthetic Limbs Are a Small Distance Away

Working with clients such as Pistorius, winner of three gold medals in the Paralympics in Beijing this year, the Ossur Corporation deals exclusively with designing and engineering advanced prosthetic limbs. With their eyes on the prize - a fully automated prosthesis that would draw its commands from the user's brain - the scientists at Ossur have created some of the most advanced prototypes to date.

 

During the Olympics, Pistorius ran using a pair of carbon-fiber blades, designed specifically for his walking style. In fact, it seems that the trend of the future is to fully customize every prosthesis for a single user, thus allowing for a deeper interaction between man and machine. Ossur is now able to replace up to 50-60% of lower limbs mobility with its devices.

 

Other major companies, including Otto Bock from Germany, also say that manufacturing methods will be spectacularly improved once biologists map the flow of electrical impulses human brains use to transmit information and commands to the body. In the future, it may be possible to actually interface prosthetics with nerves severed when a limb was lost.

 

Robotics is also expected to play a major role in future medical devices, allowing for smoother, more accurate responses to inputs, as opposed to current technologies, which offer limited mobility. Tissue engineering may soon provide scientists with alternative means of interfacing artificial limbs with live tissue. The ultimate goal is to make patients feel like their implants are truly part of their bodies.

 

In the distant future, researchers hope for devices that could perhaps relay signals such as temperature and pressure back to the patient, much in the same way regular skin receptors do. Though it is, or would be, possible to create such technologically advanced objects, it's likely they will never be able to fully mimic the wide mobility a human hand or foot has since birth. "And then we see that there is a long way to go. It is a very humbling experience to try to imitate God." Ossur's Chief Executive Jon Sigurdsson told Reuters.