Claudia Mitchell is the first ever woman to receive a ‘bionic arm’, after she lost her arm in a motorbike accident some time back. This is indeed a benchmark in the medical history.
Designed by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, a part of a multi-lab effort, funded with nearly $50 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a ‘Bionic Arm’ is an artificial robotic limb that moves as and when the person thinks about moving it, just like a normal limb.
Now, Mitchell can peel a banana in a less simian posture. All she has to do is place her prosthetic left arm next to the banana and think about grabbing it. The mechanical hand closes around the fruit and she’s ready to peel.
[The arm] works by detecting the movements of a chest muscle that has been rewired to the stumps of nerves that once went to her now-missing limb.
The only thing that’s missing in this arm is the ‘power to feel’; otherwise it will make the life of handicap people normal to a great extent. We hope the medical fraternity will soon device some kind of an option to move across this lag as well.
Till then we hope lucky Mitchell learns to discover the new dimensions that this arm will add into her world and enjoy the new lease of life that has come along with this medical wonder.
Via: Washington Post/OhGizmo
