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Alex Smith was He was 11 years old when his right hand was amputated in 2003. A drunk driver who was driving a boat crashed into his family’s boat on Lake Austin, sending him overboard. He hit an oar, and his arm was cut off in the water.
A year later, he received myoelectric arma type of prosthetics powered by electrical energy in the remaining muscles of his leg. But Smith didn’t use it because it was “too slow” and had limited movement. He can open and close his hand, but not much else. He tried other robotic devices over the years, but they had the same problems.
He says so. “There is a big delay between working and making the project actually work. In my daily life, I started to rush to find other ways to do things.”
Recently, he has been experimenting with a new technique for the Austin-based Phantom Neuro which has the ability to provide life-like control. artificial organs. The company is developing a thin, flexible tissue implant that allows amputees to move more naturally, based on the hand they want to create.
“Not many people use robotic limbs, and that’s mostly because of how dangerous the control system is,” says Connor Glass, CEO and cofounder of Phantom Neuro.
In data shared by WIRED, 10 participants in a study developed by Phantom used the company’s optical system to control a robotic arm already on the market, achieving an average accuracy of 93.8 percent across 11 hand-to-hand tests. Smith was one of the participants, while the other nine were healthy volunteers, which is common in early prosthetics studies. The success of this research paves the way for future testing of Phantom implant sensors.
Modern myoelectric prosthetics, like the one Smith tested, read electrical impulses from advanced electrodes that sit on the amputated stump. Most robotic systems have two electrodes, or electrodes. When a person extends their arm, their arm muscles contract. The compression of those muscles still occurs in the upper part of the amputated leg when it flexes. Electrodes pick up electrical signals from the spines, translate them, and trigger prosthetic movements. But surface electrodes don’t always capture stable signals because they can slip and move around, limiting their accuracy in real-world environments.
