Lifeboat Foundation

Fun stuff.

Johnny Matheny’s handshake is friendly, confident and firm — though not in the bone-crushing manner favoured by some of the alpha types here in the Pentagon.

What is remarkable is that Matheny’s proffered hand is not actually his. It is part of a robotic prosthesis researchers hope one day could help transform the lives of countless amputees.

Continue reading “From robotic hands to ‘gecko feet’, Pentagon’s DARPA research agency showcases future tech” »

Pretty cool; who knew.

SCIENTISTS have found a revolutionary way to improve how plastic, prosthetic limbs are created.

You Can “Feel” Your Fingers With This Bionic Arm

Researchers have built a bionic arm that allows patients to control and “feel” their individual fingers.

Expansion of BMI and Bionics has now come to Purdue University.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) — Researchers at Purdue have been working on technology that will help pave the way for the future people who use artificial limbs.

“The point of these research labs is to discover new technologies that we can translate into the real world and make the world a better place,” Purdue Center for Implantable Devices Director Pedro Irazoqui said.

Continue reading “Purdue technology revolutionizes future of artificial limbs” »

Cool. I run and walk everyday and each time, I tear up my left shin and ankle. I am ready for this technology.

The SuperFlex exosuit is made from a lightweight flexigrip material that keeps robotic muscles, sensors and processors in place.

Continue reading “SuperFlex’s lightweight exosuit will put a spring in your step” »

Not only Google; there is Huawei and their AR contacts and Samsung are also making AR Contacts. And, the news 3 weeks ago shows that Samsung has applied for their own patent.

Google has filed a patent for what sounds like a bionic eye.

A patent filed in 2014 and published Thursday describes a device that could correct vision without putting contacts in or wearing glasses everyday.

Continue reading “Google has a crazy idea for injecting a computer into your eyeball” »

More broadly, there’s a paradox in all this, that reflects the overarching direction of contemporary robotics. As machines become more and more general-purpose, they’re also going to become much better at tailoring their behavior to different kinds of people—and even eventually to different individuals. Already, SoftBank’s Pepper robot, a humanoid designed to interactive with people, is billed as the first machine able to read human emotions. For people to accept robots as they increasingly work their way into various areas of our lives, robots will have to develop fairly sophisticated understanding of individual human needs.

“If an assistive robot tries to help you, how much help you want really depends on your personality and the situation,” Dragan says. That’s also why robots are in some cases changing form—some of the machines designed to care for humans, for example, will have soft, cuddly bodies rather than just hard metal exoskeletons.

“We’re going to have more and more capable robots,” Dragan told me. Which means when machines interact with people, we’ll be able to customize them depending on who’s around; or if humans are around at all.

Continue reading “Robots That Act Differently When You’re Around” »

BMI/ BCs are only going to improve over time and give new lives and chances again to people. Note: this version has limited use outside the medical lab; however, they are working on making one wireless and connected in order to be used anywhere.

Thanks to an experimental treatment that included implanting a chip in his brain, Ian Burkhart was able to regain control of his hand.

Continue reading “Paralyzed man regains control of hand after having chip implanted in brain” »

All true and good points. Until the under pinning technology and net infrastructures are update; all things connected will mean all things hackable.

Medical devices like pacemakers and insulin pumps will save many lives, but they also represent an opportunity to computer hackers who would use the Internet to cause havoc. Former futurist-in-residence at the FBI, Marc Goodman says it is easy to take for granted how connected we’ve already become to the Internet. Most American adults keep their phones within arm’s reach all day, and keep their devices on their nightstand while they sleep — and forget about actually remembering people’s phone numbers. That is a job we have outsourced to machines.

In this sense, says Goodman, we are already cyborgs. But digital devices connected to the Internet will continue to move inside our bodies, just as pacemakers and insulin pumps have. In his interview, Goodman discusses cases of computer hackers taking advantage of these devices’ connectivity to show how vulnerable we could soon become to their potentially destructive wishes. In one case, a hacker demonstrated he could release several weeks of insulin into a diabetic’s body, certain to cause a diabetic coma and death. In another, hackers induced epileptic seizures by hacking the Epilepsy Foundation’s webpage.

Continue reading “Implanted Medical Devices Save Our Lives And Tempt Computer Hackers” »