Mind Controlled Prosthetics

A double amputee managed to gain full control of two robotic arms with his thoughts. Leslie Baugh had to have both of his arms amputated at shoulder level because he was involved in an electrical  accident. Forty years later, he decided to participate in a trial run by scientists at Johns Hopkins University. The University’s Applied Physics Laboratory have been working on making Modular Prosthetic Limbs for 10 years. The researchers had to test the robotic limbs on volunteers. Baugh had to undergo a surgical procedure at Johns Hopkins Hospital called targeted muscle re-innervation. This transfers his nerves to the devices .“It’s a relatively new surgical procedure that reassigns nerves that once controlled the arm and the hand,” Johns Hopkins Trauma Surgeon Albert Chi said in a statement. “By reassigning existing nerves, we can make it possible for people who have had upper-arm amputations to control their prosthetic devices by merely thinking about the action they want to perform.” In

order to identify the muscles that contract during movement, they used pattern recognition algorithms. Baugh was trained to use the system with a virtual version in substitute of the real thing. After he was used to how to use it he was fitted for the prosthetic limbs. “I think we are just getting started. It’s like the early days of the internet,” Principal Investigator Michael McLoughlin said in a news release. “There is just a tremendous amount of potential ahead of us, and we’ve just started down this road. And I think the next five to ten years are going to bring phenomenal advancement.”