Today technologies are, not only, part of our daily life but they also complete it. Technologies have been created in order to help the humankind. This growing development has, not only helped humans but also has created new solutions to old problems by introducing new careers in the labor world. One of the outstanding specialization in the past half-century is bioengineering.
What’s bioengineering?
Bioengineering is a discipline that involves engineering and biological principles to help humans with medical problems. It applies engineering theory such as programming and artificial intelligence to biomedical issues.
In the past half-century huge progress on the development of biomedical, in response to several biomedical problems such as amputation, occurred.
During the past ten decades, the solution to amputation is prosthetics, the process merging technical and medical science to create prosthesis. Their main objective is to replace the old member to allow the patient to regain the possibility to have the use of the member lost and redo his normal and daily activities. However old prosthesis is just there to stabilize the person, for example, a prosthesis leg allows a human to stand up and walk again but it does not allow a woman to do her makeup because she does not control the movement of the prosthesis since it doesn’t have a real movement. The previous problem encouraged many engineers to communicate with biologists to find a better solution and propose a better life for their patients.
Today, as a result of bioengineering robotic prosthesis entered the market. They propose a better function than a passive prosthesis. We can take two examples, a robotic hand that allows a woman to do their makeup or a robotic leg that allows walk without difficulties or even running.
But, how do prosthetics work?
To provide this solution, the prosthesis has been personalized and equipped with sensors connected to the human brain.
On February 2019 bioengineers improved the mechanism of robotic hands. They created a prosthesis that’s able to provide sensory feedback to amputees which allows better control of it and also provide to the user the possibility to do more specific tasks that required a higher control of the hand. The idea is to provide a prosthesis that is closer to the function of a human hand.
The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland, led a research on this topic and figured out that in the test of this new invention the user was able to feel when an object was slipping from his hand and react on time to spot it from falling.
These new devices, to provide sensorial feedback, have to be adapted to each user. Today this is done by connecting electrodes to the user’s muscles of the arm and then an algorithm decodes the electrical signals that were generated by the muscle which informs the bionic hand the intention wanted to reproduce.
This is just one way of the process but the brain also need the feedback on how things are responding to the first signal and here is where the sensors interact. So the sensors in the bionic hand take the information and again an algorithm decodes the information to create an electrical stimulation that will travel from the muscle’s nervous system to the brain.
On 2009, the commercialization of a robotic arm of 70 000 euros was not legal in France due to the huge inequalities created between the patients.
Priscille Deborah is a clear example of how prosthetic is changing lives and making dreams come true.
On November 2018 she became the first french patient to get a robotic arm prosthesis. More than ten years ago she got amputated three members but thanks to today’s biotechnologies improvement this did not keep her from achieving her dream, become a painter. After almost a year of treatment including surgeries and the time needed for nerves reconstruction she still not able to use 100% of her new hand which demonstrates the complexity of the whole procedure.
Nowadays this is a big step in development but still being just a fraction of all the sensations a human body can have. Bioengineers still working to put in the market a robotic hand that will give the user the ability to feel the relative position and movement of the prosthesis. Besides the high difficulty of the procedure, the large cost remains an important problem that should be considered since not everyone has access to this high tech medical treatment.
Sources:
Triplement amputée, une prothèse bionique lui change la vie.
Première en France: une prothèse bionique du bras posée ce 21 novembre [2018], LADEPECHE.FR
Bionic Hands Let Amputees Feel and Grip, Emily Waltz, IEEE SPECTRUM
AI Helps Amputees Walk With a Robotic Knee, Jeremy Hsu, IEEE SPECTRUM
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