Bionic Arms Get a Thought-Control Upgrade #WearableWednesday

NewImage

Via IEEE Spectrum

Jodie O’Connell-Ponkos used a prosthetic arm for five years, until the day she threw it across the room in frustration. “Hate was an understatement,” recalls O’Connell-Ponkos, who lost part of her right arm in an industrial meat grinder at the age of 16 in 1985. She didn’t use another prosthesis for 20 years.

O’Connell-Ponkos’ story is common among upper-limb amputees: Despite advances in engineering and availability, the rate of users abandoning upper-limb prosthetics hadn’t changed in 25 years as of 2007, with up to 75% of users rejecting electric prosthetics.

One of the reasons may be that despite better materials, more powerful motors and additional joints, upper-limb prostheses still relied on controls developed in the 1950s. These used either body-powered maneuvers involving clunky cables and harnesses or myoelectric systems, which use electronic sensors resting on the skin of the amputation site to detect muscle activity and translate that activity into motion. The clenching of a bicep, for example, might bend an artificial elbow. It wasn’t intuitive, and often required extensive practice.

Then, last year, O’Connell-Ponkos tried a prosthetic arm enhanced with an new control system that can recognize subtle nerve signals, built by Chicago-based engineering company Coapt. Unlike the prosthesis she used as a teenager, the new arm allowed her to move more naturally, even gracefully. Today, the outgoing horse trainer wears the prosthesis constantly, relying on it for everything from chopping wood to putting her hair in a ponytail.

This recent advance to a natural, intuitive control system for upper-limb prosthetics is notable, if largely overlooked. At this year’s American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association conference in Boston, I had to search for Coapt’s small booth, tucked away in the exhibit hall behind rows of splashy orthotics and leg prosthetics. There, O’Connell-Ponkos, now a paid spokesperson for Coapt, was promoting the technology, which is compatible with the five major prosthetic manufacturers.

Coapt hit the market in late 2013, and an estimated 200 individuals today use the system, says company co-founder and CEO Blair Lock. The system, encased in a small black box, consists of a circuit board and set of algorithms that use pattern recognition to decode electric signals from arm muscles, working as a bridge between the user’s thoughts and the prosthesis.

Read more.


Flora breadboard is Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Join Adafruit on Mastodon

Adafruit is on Mastodon, join in! adafruit.com/mastodon

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 36,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


Maker Business — “Packaging” chips in the US

Wearables — Enclosures help fight body humidity in costumes

Electronics — Transformers: More than meets the eye!

Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Silicon Labs introduces CircuitPython support, and more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Guardian Robot, Weather-wise Umbrella Stand, and more!

Microsoft MakeCode — MakeCode Thank You!

EYE on NPI — Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — #NewProds 7/19/23 Feat. Adafruit Matrix Portal S3 CircuitPython Powered Internet Display!

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



No Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.