Lifeboat Foundation

I suspect this will be the hands for ATLAS. being field tested by human volunteers to see what it needs to do for average use. And, then blow that away within a few years.

Johnny Matheny is the first person to live with an advanced mind-controlled robotic arm. Last December, researchers from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab delivered the arm to Matheny at his home in Port Richey, Florida. Aside from the occasional demo, this is the first time the Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) has spent significant time out of the lab.

Continue reading “The most advanced robotic arm in the world, John Hopkins’s Modular Prosthetic Limb, is finally leaving the lab” »

By Eliott Edge

“It is possible for a computer to become conscious. Basically, we are that. We are data, computation, memory. So we are conscious computers in a sense.”

—Tom Campbell, NASA

If the universe is a computer simulation, virtual reality, or video game, then a few unusual conditions seem to necessarily fall out from that reading. One is what we call consciousness, the mind, is actually something like an artificial intelligence. If the universe is a computer simulation, we are all likely one form of AI or another. In fact, we might come from the same computer that is creating this simulated universe to begin with. If so then it stands to reason that we are virtual characters and virtual minds in a virtual universe.

Continue reading “We are already Artificial Intelligence” »

A third thumb may be the beginning of human augmentation.

Imagine being able to see three times better than 20/20 vision without wearing glasses or contacts — even at age 100 or more — with the help of bionic lenses implanted in your eyes.

Dr. Garth Webb, an optometrist in British Columbia who invented the Ocumetics Bionic Lens, says patients would have perfect vision and that driving glasses, progressive lenses and contact lenses would become a dim memory as the eye-care industry is transformed.

Cyberdyne, the Japanese robotics company with the slightly suspicious name, has just gotten approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin offering its HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) lower-body exoskeleton to users in the United States through licensed medical facilities. HAL is essentially a walking robot that you strap to your own legs; sensors attached to your leg muscles detect bioelectric signals sent from your brain to your muscles telling them to move, and then the exoskeleton powers up and assists, enhancing your strength and stability.

Users in the United States can now take advantage of this friendly exoskeleton to help them with physical rehabilitation.

Continue reading “Cyberdyne’s Medical Exoskeleton Strides to FDA Approval” »

It is not Iron Man. It isn’t even Iron Fist. Lockheed Martin’s newest exoskeleton is more like Iron Leg. But for a soldier humping his weapons, ammo and body armor up a mountain in Afghanistan or a high-rise building in a future urban battle, a device to take the load off would be welcome. And, unlike science fiction supersuits, we can build it now.

Exoskeletons are part of the Pentagon’s Third Offset Strategy, which seeks to use robotics and artificial intelligence to enhance humans on the battlefield, rather than to replace them. There’s no area where the need is more acute than in the infantry, which takes the vast majority of casualties.

Continue reading “Lockheed Exoskeleton Gives Troops A Leg Up, Literally” »

Furrion’s Prosthesis exo-bionic racing mech is at CES.

Prosthetics have improved my leaps and bounds over the past century and we’ve reached a point where someone with an artificial limb is often just as capable (and in some cases even more capable) than a person with their natural arms and legs. Still, prosthetics have long fell short in one very important aspect, which is the sense of touch afforded by human skin. That could all be changing thanks to an incredible breakthrough that has provided a woman with a bionic hand that can actually feel.

Almerina Mascarello lost her left hand and part of her forearm in an accident more than two decades ago, and was chosen as one of the test subjects for a new type of prosthetic that relays the feeling of touch to the wearer. Remarkably, it seems to work brilliantly.

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In a basement laboratory, two robotocists have harnessed the sensing, swimming, and swarming abilities of bacteria to power microscopic robots. Who dares to unleash this madness?