Скачать или смотреть Prosthetic tech lets users play Rock-paper-scissors with muscle movements

(4 Jul 2018) LEADIN:
Scientists in the UK say they've developed new software that'll allow amputees to carry out a larger number of actions with existing prosthetic hands.
Rather than relying on high-tech artificial intelligence or machine learning, the software urges amputees to train their brain and learn new skills with their remaining muscles.
STORYLINE:
Visitors to London's Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition are trying out a high-tech version of Rock-paper-scissors.
Using just a few sensors strapped to their forearm, they're able to control a robotic hand and make the various hand movements.
It's the first out-of-lab demonstration of new prosthetics software, developed by scientists at Newcastle and Keele Universities.
While the average prosthetic user can carry out simple hand movements - such as opening or closing the fingers - this software claims to give users up to eight actions by contracting the muscles in different ways.
The idea is that while the eventual aim is to develop an all-in-one prosthetic device, in the short term users can train their brain and learn new skills with the remaining muscles in their affected limb.
"What we have tried to achieve is to simplify the control process and by simplification, is that removing artificial intelligence out of it totally," explains Dr. Kianoush Nazarpour, a reader in biomedical engineering at Newcastle University.
"Because our brains are by far more intelligent than any machine.
"So, what we have tried is to flip the process and make the hand as simple as possible, the control processes as simple as possible and then let the user learn how to control it.
"And with this feedback we provide to the user, over and over with training, then we can achieve by far more than what we can achieve now with artificial intelligence."
It's claimed the updated software can be used in existing modern prosthetic hands.
That means it could be downloaded over the internet by prosthetics users, giving them the opportunity for more hand movements, such as extending the index finger or closing a fist.
"People previously with their two muscles on their forearm they could do open and close of the hand," explains Dr. Nazarpour.
"What we show with scientific evidence is that people can learn to co-contract these two muscles in so many different ways.
"So, with the same sensor technology, with the same two sensors, we can train people to contract their muscles in three ways, four ways, eight ways and twelve ways.
"Now, when people learn, they can see how exponentially their control of these prosthetic hands can increase."
59-year-old Nigel Ackland lost his right arm when working in a refinery around eleven years ago.
He's since been fitted with this bebionic hand. He says its changed his life.
"You hear the phrase life-changing so many times and so often nowadays, it's become glib, " he says.
"But for me, it was. I mean, if you could imagine that every day when you walk out from your door, people look at you like this (pulls face) or they ignore you, or they look at you and turn away from you.
"And you get that for four or five years. And then suddenly you're wearing this and people cross the road to speak to you. That's the difference, that's the difference."
Ackland was invited to the Summer Science Exhibition to trial Newcastle and Keele Universities' new prosthetic software.
Within minutes he was able to indicate his muscles to make the various hand movements.
"The only frustrating thing for me is that the technology has not yet caught up where I can move this in exactly the way I want to," says Ackland.

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