Modular limb prosthesis from the Laboratory of Applied Physics

One man, who lost both hands forty years ago, was incredibly lucky last summer. At the Johns Hopkins Laboratory of Applied Physics (BLP), he was made new limbs - two revolutionary modular prostheses. Leslie Beau managed the newly acquired hands, just thinking about what he wants to do.

As part of the program to create revolutionary prostheses, which started about 10 years ago, a two-week experiment was conducted in June, in which Leslie Bo took part. Before receiving new prostheses, he underwent a reinnervation operation. As Albert Chi, an employee at Hopkins Hospital, explains, this relatively new surgical procedure was needed to sort out the nerve endings, establish the nerve connections and allow Leslie to control the prosthesis with the power of thought.
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As soon as Bo recovered after the operation, he returned to the laboratory and began training to use modular limb prostheses. First, Leslie worked with researchers on the pulse recognition system. The researchers needed to fix how and exactly which muscles contract, with what frequency and strength, how they interact. All this information was analyzed and then used to reproduce movements with prostheses. Then Bo was measured to make a suitable vest that would support artificial arms and provide connections with nerves. While the vest was brought to mind, Leslie was training to manage prostheses on a virtual simulator.

When the vest was finished and new hands were attached to Bo's shoulders, he was ready to check the results of his workouts. Among other things, Bo was able to rearrange the mug from the shelf to the shelf, for which he had to coordinate as many as eight separate movements. Such actions have to be done day after day, but other prostheses do not provide such an opportunity. And with the modular prosthetic Leslie it took only 10 days of training, which, moreover, indicates the intuitive nature of the control of such actions.

Researchers assumed that Bo's success with new prosthetics would surpass what he could achieve with more traditional methods. What they did not expect was how fast and how many actions he could master. Another important aspect: Beau managed to simultaneously control a combination of several movements of both hands.

Details of the experiment can be seen in the video:




The link to the video includes a press release from the Johns Hopkins University laboratory: www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/2014/141216.asp

PS In the comments, as always, you can offer an interesting video for translation and dubbing.