Who wants Luke Skywalker's arm?

Woohoo! I can access Blogger from my office again. Yeah! No more posting late at night. Haha. It's Monday again, which is quite sad, but I guess this "gift" of being able to post from office has helped to brighten up my day a little. :) How did you guys spend your weekend? I, unfortunately, didn't manage to type much of my IA report. Instead I spent most of my weekend, or more correctly most of Sunday, sleeping and watching TV. Hai... I guess its the "weekend effect" - I just can't get myself to work on Sundays...

Now if you remember the Star Wars trilogy, you should remember the scene in "The Empire Strikes Back" where Darth Vader slices off Luke Skywalker's forearm in one quick, elegant stroke of his beautiful lightsaber, after (or was it before?) announcing that famous line "Luke, I am your father..." Well, luckily in the Star Wars universe, losing an arm wasn't much of a problem, as Luke soon got a replacement robotic arm that functioned totally like his orginal.

Well, Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky research division, has decided to speed up development of such an arm. The target is for a working prototype in 4 years or less. The exact description of what they want is a "neurally controlled artificial limb that will restore full motor and sensory capability to upper extremity amputee patients." But I'll just call it a LSA (Luke Skywalker's Arm), which I think is shorter and more descriptive.

The development of the LSA is not going to be easy. Darpa requires the LSA to have "enough finesse to pick up a raisin or to write in longhand...sensitive enough for the wearer to handle day-to-day tasks in the dark. And...strong enough to lift 60 pounds at a time." So basically, they are really pushing the limits as (even they admit) it's something that would require "breakthrough research" in multiple areas. But I guess, like what our SC104 mathematics lecturer said, "You'll only get as high a grade as you aim for, so aim higher." (or something like that...), so it's probably a good idea to have bigger dreams and greater ambitions, or we'll never improve...

Thought-controlled robotic limbs were only the beginning.

Scientists have had a string of remarkable successes lately, taking signals from the brains of monkeys and men, and using them to move mechanical arms.

Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky research division, now wants to ratchet that work up about ten notches, by developing a "neurally controlled artificial limb that will restore full motor and sensory capability to upper extremity amputee patients. This revolutionary prosthesis will be controlled, feel, look and perform like the native limb."

Click here for the full article.