The Pentagon's Bionic Arm

[Soylent Brice]

(CBS) This story was first published on April 12, 2009. It was updated on Sept. 17, 2009.

When Americans are wounded in Afghanistan or Iraq, no expense is spared to save their lives. But once they're home, if they have suffered an amputation of their arm, they usually end up wearing an artificial limb that hasn't changed much since World War II.

*snip*

But as 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley first reported in April, that is starting to change. One remarkable leap in technology is called the DEKA arm and it's just one of the breakthroughs in a $100 million Pentagon program called "Revolutionizing Prosthetics."

Fred Downs has been wearing the standard prosthetic arm since 1968, after he stepped on a landmine in Vietnam.

"It's a basic hook. And I can rotate the hook like this and lock it," Downs told Pelley, demonstrating the limited movement ability of his prosthetic arm. "In those days they didn't have a lot of sophistication about it. They fit you and say, 'This is your arm, this is your leg.' And it was the best technology in those days and you just had to make yourself learn how to use it and I did."

read much more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/10/60minutes/main4935509.shtml?tag=broadcast

[Howardx]

1. great story

i saw it last sunday. glad to see kamen on the case.

[Soylent Brice]

3. it's extraordinary what they're accomplishing.

it'll be wonderful to have this available to all amputees one day.

[Soylent Brice]

2. at the link:

"We want these kids to have something put back on them that will essentially allow one of these kids to pick up a raisin or a grape off a table, know the difference without looking at it. That is an extraordinary goal," Kamen explained.

this is another DARPA project.