The Real Bionic Man

Remember the Six-Million Dollar Man? The great show back in the 70's, when $6 million was a lot of money and not the annual paycheck for some shlub batting .159 in the major leagues.

Lee Majors played test pilot Col. Steve Austin who augers his Northrop M2-F2 into the ground during a test flight. Then the famous words:

Steve Austin: astronaut. A man barely alive.

Then we hear Oscar Goldman, the OSI boss announcing

Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better…stronger…faster.

Ah, what a series. That was TV excellence.

Steve Austin could do lots of cool things due to his bionics - like run faster than cars. His left eye was replaced by a cool bionic eye that had night vision and something like a 20:1 zoom.

Plus he had a hot wife in Jaime Sommers (played by Lindsay Wagner).


Bionic Man circa 1975 © ABC and a Bionic Man circa 2007 © The Scotsman








Anyways, out of Scotland,

Yesterday a Scottish company, Touch Bionics, also declared: "We have the technology," with their announcement that they had successfully developed the world's first commercially available bionic hand. While the i-LIMB Hand may not bequeath its user with the strength of Mr Austin, it has transformed the lives of patients around the world and comes with a more reasonable price tag of £9,000.

The prosthetic device offers greater mobility and authenticity than any previous artificial hand. It allows users to perform far more nimble tasks such as holding a card or turning a key in a lock. The hand has five individually powered digits that can bend like natural fingers and has revolutionised the abilities of patients.

Among the first to use the i-LIMB were members of the American military, where amputations have increased dramatically as a result of the Iraq war. Juan Arredondo, a retired Sergeant with the 2nd Infantry Division, 1/506 Destroyer Company, lost his hand in 2004 after his patrol vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device.

"Every day that I have the hand, it surprises me. Now I can pick up a Styrofoam cup without crushing it. With my other hand, I would really have to concentrate on how much pressure I was putting on the cup. The i-LIMB hand does things naturally. I can just grab the cup like a regular person."

[...]

In the 1970s a new form of prosthetic arm was developed using a technology called myoelectric, which connected the muscle signals in a patient's arm to an artificial hand which could then open and close at will. Unfortunately this device was rudimentary, and was often shaped like a claw or pincer. Although it allowed a person to hold an object, there was little subtlety of movement.

By comparison the i-LIMB Hand offers a unique, highly intuitive control system that uses the traditional myoelectric signal input to open and close the hand's lifelike fingers, but has more facilities. Myoelectric controls use the electrical signal generated by muscles in the remaining portion of a patient's limb. This signal is picked up by electrodes that sit on the surface of the skin. As a result users of existing, basic myoelectric prosthetic hands can quickly adapt to the system.

The system does not involve surgery. Two small electrode plates, which detect the minute electrical signals generated by the remaining muscles in the limb stump, are placed against the skin to pick up signals. Traditionally, one electrode is placed on the top of the forearm and one on the bottom.

Patients usually have a sensation that their hand still exists despite it being amputated, something often referred to as phantom feelings. When encouraged to generate a strong signal, patients are often asked to move and flex their missing hand to generate a strong control signal. Before too long, these reflexes become intuitive, and the i-LIMB Hand and patient interact in a symbiotic way.

As each finger can move individually it offers each person a different range of grips such as using the index finger and thumb to pick up small objects, while the addition of a rotating wrist enables the patient to turn keys in a lock, an impossibility under the previous system.