Great news from the world of prosthetics: it’s now possible to operate two robotic limbs, independently, using only the power of the mind.
This is the story of Leslie Baugh, a man who lost his arms in an electrical accident about 40 years ago and gets them back as prosthetic arms.
Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory was able to connect robotic limbs to Baugh’s nervous system, which now allows him to move his new arms, and hands, to do things like grasp and pick up objects – things he had not been able to do for a long time.
Check out the video to see Baugh’s new arms in action.
“I just went into a whole different world,” Baugh said, describing the feeling he gets when he uses his robotic prosthetic arms to perform the kinds of tasks that had been out of the question for so long. He hopes to do things like retrieve soda from vending machines, saying it’s “Simple things like that that most people don’t think of,” that he longs for.
It’s a huge step toward redefining what is possible in medical science, and the team promises the best is yet to come. “We’re just getting started at this point. It’s like the early days of the internet,” says Mike McLoughlin, the Program Manager with the team.
sources: ScienceAlert, ScienceDaily, JHUAPL