A clear flexible PCB with a number of gold electrodes on one end. It is wrapped over a black cable to demonstrate its flexibility. A set of dashed white lines goes from one end to a zoomed in image of the circuit structure inset in the top right of the image.

Biohybrid Implant Patches Broken Nerves With Stem Cells

March 29, 2023 by Navarre Bartz 17 Comments

Neural interfaces have made great strides in recent years, but still suffer from poor longevity and resolution. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed a biohybrid implant to improve the situation.

As we’ve seen before, interfacing electronics and biological systems is no simple feat. Bodies tend to reject foreign objects, and transplanted nerves can have difficulty assuming new roles. By combining flexible electronics and induced pluripotent stem cells into a single device, the researchers were able to develop a high resolution neural interface that can selectively bind to different neuron types which may allow for better separation of sensation and motor signals in future prostheses.

As is typically the case with new research, the only patients to benefit so far are rats and only on the timescale of the study (28 days). That said, this is a promising step forward for regenerative neurology.

We’re no strangers to bioengineering here. Checkout how you can heal faster with electronic bandages or build a DIY vibrotactile stimulator for Coordinated Reset Stimulation (CRS).

(via Interesting Engineering)

3D Printing Delivers “Glass” Eyes In Record Time

December 10, 2021 by Al Williams 13 Comments

Obviously, losing an eye would be bad for your vision. But if you think about it, it is also a detriment to your appearance. You might not need a prosthetic eye, and you can certainly rock an eye patch, but a lot of people with this problem get an artificial or “glass” eye. These glass eyes are hand-painted disks that fit into the eye socket. However, a British man now has a new kind of eye prosthesis that is 3D printed, a technology that can potentially cut waiting time for patients in half.

The existing process is lengthy because it requires taking a mold of the eye socket and manually matching the remaining eye with the new artificial eye. With the 3D printed technology, scans of the eye socket and the other eye make this process much simpler.

Moorfields Eye Hospital, the source of the eye, says that a conventional eye takes about six weeks, but the new ones take no more than three weeks. The patient only needs to spend about a half-hour doing the scans before the wait starts. We presume it can be made for less cost, as well.

Medicine is embracing 3D printing and we’ve seen a 3D ear. We are waiting for our personal exoskeleton. Some of the medical 3D printing we’ve seen is for the birds.

Tiny ball magnets implanted in muscles could provide much better control over prosthetics.

Magnets Could Give Prosthetic Control A Leg Up

August 21, 2021 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

Today, prostheses and exoskeletons are controlled using electromyography. In other words, by recording the electrical activity in muscles as they contract. It’s neither intuitive nor human-like, and it really only shows the brain’s intent, not the reality of what the muscle is doing.

Researchers at MIT’s Media Lab have figured out a way to use magnets for much more precise control, and they’re calling it magnetomicrometry (MM). By implanting pairs of tiny ball magnets and tracking their movement with magnetic sensors, each muscle can be measured individually and far more accurately than with electromyography.

After embedding pairs of 3mm diameter ball magnets into the calves of turkeys, the researchers were able to detect muscle movement in three milliseconds, and to the precision of thirty-seven microns, which is about the width of a human hair. They hope to try MM on humans within the next couple of years. It would be a great solution overall if it works out, because compared with the electromyography method, MM is cheaper, less invasive, and potentially permanent. Couple MM with a new type of amputation surgery called AMI that provides a fuller range of motion, less pain overall, and finer control of prosthetics, and the future of prostheses and rehabilitation looks really exciting. Be sure to check out the video after the break.

There’s more than one way to control prostheses, such as deep learning and somatosensory stimulation.

Continue reading “Magnets Could Give Prosthetic Control A Leg Up” →

Gripper Uses Belts To Pinch And Grasp

February 27, 2020 by Danie Conradie 6 Comments

For all the work done since the dawn of robotics, there is still no match for the human hand in terms of its dexterity and adaptability. Researchers of the IRIM Lab at Koreatech is a step closer with their ingenious BLT gripper, which can pinch with precision or grasp a larger object with evenly distributed force. (Video embedded below.)

The three fingered gripper is technically called a “belt and link actuated transformable adaptive gripper with active transition capability”. Each finger is a interesting combination of a rigid “fingertip” and actuation link, and a belt as a grasping surface. The actuation link has a small gearbox at it’s base to open and close the hand, and the hinge with the “fingertip” is spring-loaded to the open position. A flexible belt stretches between the finger tip and the base of the gripper, which can be tensioned to actuate the fingertip for pinching, or provide even force across the inside of the gripper for grasping. Two of the fingers can also rotate at the base to give various gripper configurations. This allows the gripper to be used in various ways, including smoothly shifting between pinching and grasping without dropping a object.

We love the relative simplicity of the mechanism, and can see it being used for general robotics and prosthetic hands, especially if force sensing is integrated. The mechanism should be fairly easy to replicate using 3D printed components, a piece of toothed belt, and two cheap servos, so get cracking! Continue reading “Gripper Uses Belts To Pinch And Grasp” →

FitSocket Is A Portal To Better Prostheses

November 11, 2019 by Kristina Panos 17 Comments

Traditionally, sockets for prostheses are created by making a plaster cast of the limb being fitted, and are then sculpted in carbon fiber. It’s an expensive and time-consuming process, and what is supposed to be a customized socket often turns out to be an uncomfortable disappointment. Though prosthetists design these sockets specifically to take pressure off of the more rigid areas of tissue, this usually ends up putting more pressure on the softer areas, causing pain and discomfort.

An MIT team led by [Arthur Preton] wants to make prosthesis sockets more comfortable and better customized. They created FitSocket, a machine that assesses the rigidity of limb tissue. You can see it in motion after the break.

FitSocket is essentially a ring of 14 actuators that gently prod the limb and test how much pressure it takes to push in the tissue. By repeating this process over the entire limb, [Preton] can create a map that shows the varying degrees of stiffness or softness in the tissue.

We love to see advancements in prostheses. Here’s an electronic skin that brings feeling to artificial fingertips.

Continue reading “FitSocket Is A Portal To Better Prostheses” →

E-Dermis: Feeling At Your (Prosthetic) Fingertips

June 24, 2018 by Kristina Panos No comments

When we lose a limb, the brain is really none the wiser. It continues to send signals out, but since they no longer have a destination, the person is stuck with one-way communication and a phantom-limb feeling. The fact that the brain carries on has always been promising as far as prostheses are concerned, because it means the electrical signals could potentially be used to control new limbs and digits the natural way.

A diagram of the e-dermis via *Science Robotics*.

It’s also good news for adding a sense of touch to upper-limb prostheses. Researchers at Johns Hopkins university have spent the last year testing out their concept of an e-dermis—a multi-layer approach to expanding the utility of artificial limbs that can detect the curvature and sharpness of objects.

Like real skin, the e-dermis has an outer, epidermal layer and an inner, dermal layer. Both layers use conductive and piezoresistive textiles to transmit information about tangible objects back to the peripheral nerves in the limb. E-dermis does this non-invasively through the skin using transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, better known as TENS. Here’s a link to the full article published in Science Robotics.

First, the researchers made a neuromorphic model of all the nerves and receptors that relay signals to the nervous system. To test the e-dermis, they used 3-D printed objects designed to be grasped between thumb and forefinger, and monitored the subject’s brain activity via EEG.

For now, the e-dermis is confined to the fingertips. Ideally, it would cover the entire prosthesis and be able to detect temperature as well as curvature. Stay tuned, because it’s next on their list.

Speaking of tunes, here’s a prosthetic arm that uses a neural network to achieve individual finger control and allows its owner to play the piano again.

Thanks for the tip, [Qes].

Student 3D Prints Eyes

February 15, 2018 by Al Williams 20 Comments

[Ondřej Vocílka] is a student at the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic. In addition, the 23-year-old lost his vision in his left eye. While attending a lecture on 3D printing, he wondered if he could 3D print an ophthalmic prosthesis — an artificial eye. Turns out, he could. If you don’t speak Czech, you’ll need to call on a translation service like we did.

Unlike conventional glass or plastic eyes, it is trivial to change parameters like color when 3D printing the prosthetic. This is especially important with the iris and the finished product takes about 90 minutes to print. There is additional time required to coat the product with an acrylic layer to mimic the gloss of a natural eye.

Continue reading “Student 3D Prints Eyes” →