Robotic Limbs That Plug into the Brain
From: Technology Review - 10/27/2010
By: Emily Singer 

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has backed the development
of two new sophisticated prosthetic limbs that can move with natural
dexterity and can be controlled with human thought. The new designs have
about 20 degrees of independent motion and can be operated using several
different interfaces. One device, developed by DEKA Research and Development,
can be consciously controlled using a system of levers in a shoe. Meanwhile,
Applied Physics Laboratories (APL) researchers have developed a second
prosthetic arm with an even greater array of possible movements and have
applied to begin human testing. The APL team wants to work with researchers
at the University of Pittsburgh and the California Institute of Technology to
begin implanting spinal cord injury patients in 2011. The new design will be
similar to that used in cardiac pacemakers and deep brain stimulation
devices, but the prosthetic arm carries out more complex functions than a
pacemaker, and therefore more information is needed to control it. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/26622/

Links:
DEKA
http://www.dekaresearch.com/index.shtml

APL
http://www.jhuapl.edu/

John Donoghue
http://donoghue.neuro.brown.edu/

Andrew Schwartz
http://motorlab.neurobio.pitt.edu/people.php?name=andy