It’s rare to see the future unfold in front of our eyes this dramatically but here it is: the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab has helped a man who lost both his arms in a “freak electrical accident” connect to dual robotic arms by connecting to and reading from his nervous system. The results aren’t quite staggering as he still has limited control over the arms but the future is bright for amputees.
Human-controlled robotic arms are getting better and better (check out the video below of a woman controlling an arm with her brain), and the hardware needed to drive a usable arm is improving yearly. It won’t be long before we can expect to see amputees like the gentlemen in the video regain use of their limbs. The future, as they say, is here. It’s just not evenly distributed.