Todd Kuiken: A prosthetic arm that "feels"

174,311 views ・ 2011-10-20

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:15
So today, I would like to talk with you
0
15260
3000
00:18
about bionics,
1
18260
2000
00:20
which is the popular term
2
20260
2000
00:22
for the science of replacing part of a living organism
3
22260
3000
00:25
with a mechatronic device, or a robot.
4
25260
3000
00:28
It is essentially
5
28260
2000
00:30
the stuff of life meets machine.
6
30260
3000
00:33
And specifically, I'd like to talk with you
7
33260
2000
00:35
about how bionics is evolving
8
35260
3000
00:38
for people with arm amputations.
9
38260
3000
00:41
This is our motivation.
10
41260
3000
00:44
Arm amputation causes a huge disability.
11
44260
3000
00:47
I mean, the functional impairment is clear.
12
47260
2000
00:49
Our hands are amazing instruments.
13
49260
2000
00:51
And when you lose one, far less both,
14
51260
3000
00:54
it's a lot harder to do the things
15
54260
2000
00:56
we physically need to do.
16
56260
2000
00:58
There's also a huge emotional impact.
17
58260
2000
01:00
And actually, I spend as much of my time in clinic
18
60260
2000
01:02
dealing with the emotional adjustment of patients
19
62260
3000
01:05
as with the physical disability.
20
65260
2000
01:07
And finally, there's a profound social impact.
21
67260
3000
01:10
We talk with our hands.
22
70260
2000
01:12
We greet with our hands.
23
72260
2000
01:14
And we interact with the physical world with our hands.
24
74260
3000
01:17
And when they're missing,
25
77260
2000
01:19
it's a barrier.
26
79260
2000
01:21
Arm amputation is usually caused by trauma,
27
81260
3000
01:24
with things like industrial accidents,
28
84260
2000
01:26
motor vehicle collisions
29
86260
2000
01:28
or, very poignantly, war.
30
88260
2000
01:30
There are also some children who are born without arms,
31
90260
3000
01:33
called congenital limb deficiency.
32
93260
3000
01:36
Unfortunately, we don't do great
33
96260
2000
01:38
with upper-limb prosthetics.
34
98260
2000
01:40
There are two general types.
35
100260
2000
01:42
They're called body-powered prostheses,
36
102260
2000
01:44
which were invented just after the Civil War,
37
104260
2000
01:46
refined in World War I and World War II.
38
106260
3000
01:49
Here you see a patent
39
109260
2000
01:51
for an arm in 1912.
40
111260
2000
01:53
It's not a lot different
41
113260
2000
01:55
than the one you see on my patient.
42
115260
3000
01:58
They work by harnessing shoulder power.
43
118260
2000
02:00
So when you squish your shoulders, they pull on a bicycle cable.
44
120260
3000
02:03
And that bicycle cable can open or close a hand or a hook
45
123260
3000
02:06
or bend an elbow.
46
126260
2000
02:08
And we still use them commonly,
47
128260
2000
02:10
because they're very robust
48
130260
2000
02:12
and relatively simple devices.
49
132260
2000
02:14
The state of the art
50
134260
2000
02:16
is what we call myoelectric prostheses.
51
136260
2000
02:18
These are motorized devices
52
138260
2000
02:20
that are controlled
53
140260
2000
02:22
by little electrical signals from your muscle.
54
142260
2000
02:24
Every time you contract a muscle,
55
144260
2000
02:26
it emits a little electricity
56
146260
2000
02:28
that you can record with antennae or electrodes
57
148260
2000
02:30
and use that to operate the motorized prosthesis.
58
150260
3000
02:33
They work pretty well
59
153260
2000
02:35
for people who have just lost their hand,
60
155260
2000
02:37
because your hand muscles are still there.
61
157260
2000
02:39
You squeeze your hand, these muscles contract.
62
159260
2000
02:41
You open it, these muscles contract.
63
161260
2000
02:43
So it's intuitive, and it works pretty well.
64
163260
3000
02:46
Well how about with higher levels of amputation?
65
166260
2000
02:48
Now you've lost your arm above the elbow.
66
168260
2000
02:50
You're missing not only these muscles,
67
170260
2000
02:52
but your hand and your elbow too.
68
172260
2000
02:54
What do you do?
69
174260
2000
02:56
Well our patients have to use
70
176260
2000
02:58
very code-y systems
71
178260
3000
03:01
of using just their arm muscles
72
181260
2000
03:03
to operate robotic limbs.
73
183260
3000
03:06
We have robotic limbs.
74
186260
2000
03:08
There are several available on the market, and here you see a few.
75
188260
3000
03:11
They contain just a hand that will open and close,
76
191260
3000
03:14
a wrist rotator and an elbow.
77
194260
2000
03:16
There's no other functions.
78
196260
2000
03:18
If they did, how would we tell them what to do?
79
198260
2000
03:20
We built our own arm at the Rehab Institute of Chicago
80
200260
3000
03:23
where we've added some wrist flexion and shoulder joints
81
203260
3000
03:26
to get up to six motors, or six degrees of freedom.
82
206260
3000
03:29
And we've had the opportunity to work with some very advanced arms
83
209260
3000
03:32
that were funded by the U.S. military, using these prototypes,
84
212260
3000
03:35
that had up to 10 different degrees of freedom
85
215260
3000
03:38
including movable hands.
86
218260
2000
03:40
But at the end of the day,
87
220260
2000
03:42
how do we tell these robotic arms what to do?
88
222260
2000
03:44
How do we control them?
89
224260
2000
03:46
Well we need a neural interface,
90
226260
2000
03:48
a way to connect to our nervous system
91
228260
2000
03:50
or our thought processes
92
230260
2000
03:52
so that it's intuitive, it's natural,
93
232260
2000
03:54
like for you and I.
94
234260
4000
03:58
Well the body works by starting a motor command in your brain,
95
238260
3000
04:01
going down your spinal cord,
96
241260
2000
04:03
out the nerves and to your periphery.
97
243260
2000
04:05
And your sensation's the exact opposite.
98
245260
2000
04:07
You touch yourself, there's a stimulus
99
247260
2000
04:09
that comes up those very same nerves back up to your brain.
100
249260
3000
04:13
When you lose your arm, that nervous system still works.
101
253260
3000
04:16
Those nerves can put out command signals.
102
256260
3000
04:19
And if I tap the nerve ending
103
259260
2000
04:21
on a World War II vet,
104
261260
2000
04:23
he'll still feel his missing hand.
105
263260
2000
04:25
So you might say,
106
265260
2000
04:27
let's go to the brain
107
267260
2000
04:29
and put something in the brain to record signals,
108
269260
3000
04:32
or in the end of the peripheral nerve and record them there.
109
272260
3000
04:35
And these are very exciting research areas,
110
275260
3000
04:38
but it's really, really hard.
111
278260
2000
04:40
You have to put in
112
280260
2000
04:42
hundreds of microscopic wires
113
282260
2000
04:44
to record from little tiny individual neurons -- ordinary fibers
114
284260
4000
04:48
that put out tiny signals
115
288260
2000
04:50
that are microvolts.
116
290260
2000
04:52
And it's just too hard
117
292260
2000
04:54
to use now and for my patients today.
118
294260
2000
04:56
So we developed a different approach.
119
296260
3000
04:59
We're using a biological amplifier
120
299260
3000
05:02
to amplify these nerve signals -- muscles.
121
302260
3000
05:05
Muscles will amplify the nerve signals
122
305260
2000
05:07
about a thousand-fold,
123
307260
2000
05:09
so that we can record them from on top of the skin,
124
309260
3000
05:12
like you saw earlier.
125
312260
2000
05:14
So our approach is something we call targeted reinnervation.
126
314260
3000
05:17
Imagine, with somebody who's lost their whole arm,
127
317260
3000
05:20
we still have four major nerves
128
320260
2000
05:22
that go down your arm.
129
322260
2000
05:24
And we take the nerve away from your chest muscle
130
324260
3000
05:27
and let these nerves grow into it.
131
327260
3000
05:30
Now you think, "Close hand," and a little section of your chest contracts.
132
330260
3000
05:33
You think, "Bend elbow,"
133
333260
2000
05:35
a different section contracts.
134
335260
2000
05:37
And we can use electrodes or antennae
135
337260
2000
05:39
to pick that up and tell the arm to move.
136
339260
3000
05:42
That's the idea.
137
342260
2000
05:44
So this is the first man that we tried it on.
138
344260
3000
05:47
His name is Jesse Sullivan.
139
347260
2000
05:49
He's just a saint of a man --
140
349260
2000
05:51
54-year-old lineman who touched the wrong wire
141
351260
2000
05:53
and had both of his arms burnt so badly
142
353260
3000
05:56
they had to be amputated at the shoulder.
143
356260
2000
05:58
Jesse came to us at the RIC
144
358260
2000
06:00
to be fit with these state-of-the-art devices, and here you see them.
145
360260
3000
06:03
I'm still using that old technology
146
363260
3000
06:06
with a bicycle cable on his right side.
147
366260
2000
06:08
And he picks which joint he wants to move with those chin switches.
148
368260
3000
06:11
On the left side he's got a modern motorized prosthesis
149
371260
3000
06:14
with those three joints,
150
374260
2000
06:16
and he operates little pads in his shoulder
151
376260
3000
06:19
that he touches to make the arm go.
152
379260
2000
06:21
And Jesse's a good crane operator,
153
381260
2000
06:23
and he did okay by our standards.
154
383260
2000
06:25
He also required a revision surgery on his chest.
155
385260
3000
06:28
And that gave us the opportunity
156
388260
2000
06:30
to do targeted reinnervation.
157
390260
2000
06:32
So my colleague, Dr. Greg Dumanian, did the surgery.
158
392260
3000
06:35
First, we cut away the nerve to his own muscle,
159
395260
3000
06:38
then we took the arm nerves
160
398260
2000
06:40
and just kind of had them shift down onto his chest
161
400260
2000
06:42
and closed him up.
162
402260
2000
06:44
And after about three months,
163
404260
2000
06:46
the nerves grew in a little bit and we could get a twitch.
164
406260
2000
06:48
And after six months, the nerves grew in well,
165
408260
3000
06:51
and you could see strong contractions.
166
411260
2000
06:53
And this is what it looks like.
167
413260
2000
06:55
This is what happens when Jesse thinks
168
415260
2000
06:57
open and close his hand,
169
417260
2000
06:59
or bend or straighten your elbow.
170
419260
3000
07:02
You can see the movements on his chest,
171
422260
2000
07:04
and those little hash marks
172
424260
2000
07:06
are where we put our antennae, or electrodes.
173
426260
2000
07:08
And I challenge anybody in the room
174
428260
2000
07:10
to make their chest go like this.
175
430260
2000
07:12
His brain is thinking about his arm.
176
432260
2000
07:14
He has not learned how to do this with the chest.
177
434260
3000
07:17
There is not a learning process.
178
437260
2000
07:19
That's why it's intuitive.
179
439260
2000
07:21
So here's Jesse in our first little test with him.
180
441260
3000
07:24
On the left-hand side, you see his original prosthesis,
181
444260
3000
07:27
and he's using those switches
182
447260
2000
07:29
to move little blocks from one box to the other.
183
449260
2000
07:31
He's had that arm for about 20 months, so he's pretty good with it.
184
451260
3000
07:34
On the right side,
185
454260
2000
07:36
two months after we fit him with his targeted reinnervation prosthesis --
186
456260
3000
07:39
which, by the way, is the same physical arm,
187
459260
3000
07:42
just programmed a little different --
188
462260
2000
07:44
you can see that he's much faster
189
464260
2000
07:46
and much smoother as he moves these little blocks.
190
466260
3000
07:49
And we're only able to use three of the signals at this time.
191
469260
3000
07:52
Then we had one of those little surprises in science.
192
472260
5000
07:57
So we're all motivated to get motor commands
193
477260
2000
07:59
to drive robotic arms.
194
479260
2000
08:01
And after a few months,
195
481260
2000
08:03
you touch Jesse on his chest,
196
483260
2000
08:05
and he felt his missing hand.
197
485260
3000
08:08
His hand sensation grew into his chest again
198
488260
2000
08:10
probably because we had also taken away a lot of fat,
199
490260
3000
08:13
so the skin was right down to the muscle
200
493260
2000
08:15
and deinnervated, if you would, his skin.
201
495260
2000
08:17
So you touch Jesse here, he feels his thumb;
202
497260
2000
08:19
you touch it here, he feels his pinky.
203
499260
2000
08:21
He feels light touch
204
501260
2000
08:23
down to one gram of force.
205
503260
2000
08:25
He feels hot, cold, sharp, dull,
206
505260
3000
08:28
all in his missing hand,
207
508260
2000
08:30
or both his hand and his chest,
208
510260
2000
08:32
but he can attend to either.
209
512260
2000
08:34
So this is really exciting for us,
210
514260
2000
08:36
because now we have a portal,
211
516260
2000
08:38
a portal, or a way to potentially give back sensation,
212
518260
4000
08:42
so that he might feel what he touches
213
522260
2000
08:44
with his prosthetic hand.
214
524260
2000
08:46
Imagine sensors in the hand
215
526260
2000
08:48
coming up and pressing on this new hand skin.
216
528260
3000
08:51
So it was very exciting.
217
531260
2000
08:53
We've also gone on
218
533260
2000
08:55
with what was initially our primary population
219
535260
2000
08:57
of people with above-the-elbow amputations.
220
537260
2000
08:59
And here we deinnervate, or cut the nerve away,
221
539260
3000
09:02
just from little segments of muscle
222
542260
2000
09:04
and leave others alone
223
544260
2000
09:06
that give us our up-down signals
224
546260
2000
09:08
and two others that will give us a hand open and close signal.
225
548260
3000
09:11
This was one of our first patients, Chris.
226
551260
2000
09:13
You see him with his original device
227
553260
2000
09:15
on the left there after eight months of use,
228
555260
2000
09:17
and on the right, it is two months.
229
557260
2000
09:19
He's about four or five times as fast
230
559260
3000
09:22
with this simple little performance metric.
231
562260
3000
09:25
All right.
232
565260
2000
09:27
So one of the best parts of my job
233
567260
3000
09:30
is working with really great patients
234
570260
2000
09:32
who are also our research collaborators.
235
572260
2000
09:34
And we're fortunate today
236
574260
2000
09:36
to have Amanda Kitts come and join us.
237
576260
2000
09:38
Please welcome Amanda Kitts.
238
578260
2000
09:40
(Applause)
239
580260
7000
09:47
So Amanda, would you please tell us how you lost your arm?
240
587260
3000
09:50
Amanda Kitts: Sure. In 2006, I had a car accident.
241
590260
3000
09:53
And I was driving home from work,
242
593260
3000
09:56
and a truck was coming the opposite direction,
243
596260
2000
09:58
came over into my lane,
244
598260
2000
10:00
ran over the top of my car and his axle tore my arm off.
245
600260
4000
10:04
Todd Kuiken: Okay, so after your amputation, you healed up.
246
604260
3000
10:07
And you've got one of these conventional arms.
247
607260
2000
10:09
Can you tell us how it worked?
248
609260
3000
10:12
AK: Well, it was a little difficult,
249
612260
2000
10:14
because all I had to work with was a bicep and a tricep.
250
614260
2000
10:16
So for the simple little things like picking something up,
251
616260
3000
10:19
I would have to bend my elbow,
252
619260
3000
10:22
and then I would have to cocontract
253
622260
2000
10:24
to get it to change modes.
254
624260
2000
10:26
When I did that,
255
626260
2000
10:28
I had to use my bicep
256
628260
3000
10:31
to get the hand to close,
257
631260
2000
10:33
use my tricep to get it to open,
258
633260
2000
10:35
cocontract again
259
635260
2000
10:37
to get the elbow to work again.
260
637260
2000
10:39
TK: So it was a little slow?
261
639260
2000
10:41
AK: A little slow, and it was just hard to work.
262
641260
3000
10:44
You had to concentrate a whole lot.
263
644260
2000
10:46
TK: Okay, so I think about nine months later
264
646260
3000
10:49
that you had the targeted reinnervation surgery,
265
649260
2000
10:51
took six more months to have all the reinnervation.
266
651260
3000
10:54
Then we fit her with a prosthesis.
267
654260
3000
10:57
And how did that work for you?
268
657260
2000
10:59
AK: It works good.
269
659260
3000
11:02
I was able to use my elbow
270
662260
4000
11:06
and my hand simultaneously.
271
666260
3000
11:09
I could work them just by my thoughts.
272
669260
2000
11:11
So I didn't have to do any of the cocontracting and all that.
273
671260
3000
11:14
TK: A little faster?
274
674260
2000
11:16
AK: A little faster. And much more easy, much more natural.
275
676260
4000
11:20
TK: Okay, this was my goal.
276
680260
3000
11:23
For 20 years, my goal was to let somebody
277
683260
3000
11:26
[be] able to use their elbow and hand in an intuitive way
278
686260
3000
11:29
and at the same time.
279
689260
2000
11:31
And we now have over 50 patients around the world who have had this surgery,
280
691260
3000
11:34
including over a dozen of our wounded warriors
281
694260
2000
11:36
in the U.S. armed services.
282
696260
2000
11:38
The success rate of the nerve transfers is very high.
283
698260
3000
11:41
It's like 96 percent.
284
701260
2000
11:43
Because we're putting a big fat nerve onto a little piece of muscle.
285
703260
3000
11:46
And it provides intuitive control.
286
706260
4000
11:50
Our functional testing, those little tests,
287
710260
2000
11:52
all show that they're a lot quicker and a lot easier.
288
712260
2000
11:54
And the most important thing
289
714260
2000
11:56
is our patients have appreciated it.
290
716260
2000
11:58
So that was all very exciting.
291
718260
2000
12:00
But we want to do better.
292
720260
3000
12:03
There's a lot of information in those nerve signals,
293
723260
4000
12:07
and we wanted to get more.
294
727260
2000
12:09
You can move each finger. You can move your thumb, your wrist.
295
729260
3000
12:12
Can we get more out of it?
296
732260
2000
12:14
So we did some experiments
297
734260
2000
12:16
where we saturated our poor patients with zillions of electrodes
298
736260
3000
12:19
and then had them try to do two dozen different tasks --
299
739260
3000
12:22
from wiggling a finger to moving a whole arm
300
742260
3000
12:25
to reaching for something --
301
745260
2000
12:27
and recorded this data.
302
747260
2000
12:29
And then we used some algorithms
303
749260
2000
12:31
that are a lot like speech recognition algorithms,
304
751260
2000
12:33
called pattern recognition.
305
753260
2000
12:35
See.
306
755260
2000
12:37
(Laughter)
307
757260
2000
12:39
And here you can see, on Jesse's chest,
308
759260
2000
12:41
when he just tried to do three different things,
309
761260
2000
12:43
you can see three different patterns.
310
763260
2000
12:45
But I can't put in an electrode
311
765260
2000
12:47
and say, "Go there."
312
767260
2000
12:49
So we collaborated with our colleagues in University of New Brunswick,
313
769260
3000
12:52
came up with this algorithm control,
314
772260
2000
12:54
which Amanda can now demonstrate.
315
774260
2000
12:56
AK: So I have the elbow that goes up and down.
316
776260
5000
13:01
I have the wrist rotation
317
781260
2000
13:03
that goes -- and it can go all the way around.
318
783260
3000
13:06
And I have the wrist flexion and extension.
319
786260
4000
13:10
And I also have the hand closed and open.
320
790260
3000
13:13
TK: Thank you, Amanda.
321
793260
2000
13:15
Now this is a research arm,
322
795260
2000
13:17
but it's made out of commercial components from here down
323
797260
3000
13:20
and a few that I've borrowed from around the world.
324
800260
3000
13:23
It's about seven pounds,
325
803260
3000
13:26
which is probably about what my arm would weigh
326
806260
2000
13:28
if I lost it right here.
327
808260
2000
13:30
Obviously, that's heavy for Amanda.
328
810260
3000
13:33
And in fact, it feels even heavier,
329
813260
2000
13:35
because it's not glued on the same.
330
815260
2000
13:37
She's carrying all the weight through harnesses.
331
817260
2000
13:39
So the exciting part isn't so much the mechatronics,
332
819260
3000
13:42
but the control.
333
822260
2000
13:44
So we've developed a small microcomputer
334
824260
3000
13:47
that is blinking somewhere behind her back
335
827260
3000
13:50
and is operating this
336
830260
2000
13:52
all by the way she trains it
337
832260
2000
13:54
to use her individual muscle signals.
338
834260
2000
13:56
So Amanda, when you first started using this arm,
339
836260
2000
13:58
how long did it take to use it?
340
838260
3000
14:01
AK: It took just about probably three to four hours
341
841260
2000
14:03
to get it to train.
342
843260
2000
14:05
I had to hook it up to a computer,
343
845260
2000
14:07
so I couldn't just train it anywhere.
344
847260
2000
14:09
So if it stopped working, I just had to take it off.
345
849260
3000
14:12
So now it's able to train
346
852260
2000
14:14
with just this little piece on the back.
347
854260
2000
14:16
I can wear it around.
348
856260
2000
14:18
If it stops working for some reason, I can retrain it.
349
858260
3000
14:21
Takes about a minute.
350
861260
2000
14:23
TK: So we're really excited,
351
863260
2000
14:25
because now we're getting to a clinically practical device.
352
865260
3000
14:28
And that's where our goal is --
353
868260
2000
14:30
to have something clinically pragmatic to wear.
354
870260
4000
14:34
We've also had Amanda able to use
355
874260
3000
14:37
some of our more advanced arms that I showed you earlier.
356
877260
3000
14:41
Here's Amanda using an arm made by DEKA Research Corporation.
357
881260
3000
14:44
And I believe Dean Kamen presented it at TED a few years ago.
358
884260
4000
14:48
So Amanda, you can see,
359
888260
2000
14:50
has really good control.
360
890260
2000
14:52
It's all the pattern recognition.
361
892260
2000
14:54
And it now has a hand that can do different grasps.
362
894260
3000
14:57
What we do is have the patient go all the way open
363
897260
3000
15:00
and think, "What hand grasp pattern do I want?"
364
900260
3000
15:03
It goes into that mode,
365
903260
2000
15:05
and then you can do up to five or six different hand grasps with this hand.
366
905260
2000
15:07
Amanda, how many were you able to do with the DEKA arm?
367
907260
3000
15:10
AK: I was able to get four.
368
910260
2000
15:12
I had the key grip, I had a chuck grip,
369
912260
3000
15:15
I had a power grasp
370
915260
2000
15:17
and I had a fine pinch.
371
917260
2000
15:19
But my favorite one was just when the hand was open,
372
919260
2000
15:21
because I work with kids,
373
921260
2000
15:23
and so all the time you're clapping and singing,
374
923260
3000
15:26
so I was able to do that again, which was really good.
375
926260
3000
15:29
TK: That hand's not so good for clapping.
376
929260
2000
15:31
AK: Can't clap with this one.
377
931260
2000
15:33
TK: All right. So that's exciting
378
933260
2000
15:35
on where we may go with the better mechatronics,
379
935260
2000
15:37
if we make them good enough
380
937260
2000
15:39
to put out on the market and use in a field trial.
381
939260
3000
15:42
I want you to watch closely.
382
942260
2000
15:44
(Video) Claudia: Oooooh!
383
944260
2000
15:46
TK: That's Claudia,
384
946260
2000
15:48
and that was the first time
385
948260
2000
15:50
she got to feel sensation through her prosthetic.
386
950260
3000
15:53
She had a little sensor at the end of her prosthesis
387
953260
3000
15:56
that then she rubbed over different surfaces,
388
956260
3000
15:59
and she could feel different textures
389
959260
2000
16:01
of sandpaper, different grits, ribbon cable,
390
961260
3000
16:04
as it pushed on her reinnervated hand skin.
391
964260
3000
16:07
She said that when she just ran it across the table,
392
967260
3000
16:10
it felt like her finger was rocking.
393
970260
2000
16:12
So that's an exciting laboratory experiment
394
972260
2000
16:14
on how to give back, potentially, some skin sensation.
395
974260
3000
16:17
But here's another video that shows some of our challenges.
396
977260
3000
16:20
This is Jesse, and he's squeezing a foam toy.
397
980260
3000
16:23
And the harder he squeezes -- you see a little black thing in the middle
398
983260
3000
16:26
that's pushing on his skin proportional to how hard he squeezes.
399
986260
3000
16:29
But look at all the electrodes around it.
400
989260
2000
16:31
I've got a real estate problem.
401
991260
2000
16:33
You're supposed to put a bunch of these things on there,
402
993260
2000
16:35
but our little motor's making all kinds of noise
403
995260
3000
16:38
right next to my electrodes.
404
998260
2000
16:40
So we're really challenged on what we're doing there.
405
1000260
3000
16:43
The future is bright.
406
1003260
2000
16:45
We're excited about where we are and a lot of things we want to do.
407
1005260
3000
16:48
So for example,
408
1008260
2000
16:50
one is to get rid of my real estate problem
409
1010260
3000
16:53
and get better signals.
410
1013260
2000
16:55
We want to develop these little tiny capsules
411
1015260
3000
16:58
about the size of a piece of risotto
412
1018260
2000
17:00
that we can put into the muscles
413
1020260
2000
17:02
and telemeter out the EMG signals,
414
1022260
3000
17:05
so that it's not worrying about electrode contact.
415
1025260
3000
17:08
And we can have the real estate open
416
1028260
2000
17:10
to try more sensation feedback.
417
1030260
2000
17:12
We want to build a better arm.
418
1032260
2000
17:14
This arm -- they're always made for the 50th percentile male --
419
1034260
4000
17:18
which means they're too big for five-eighths of the world.
420
1038260
4000
17:22
So rather than a super strong or super fast arm,
421
1042260
3000
17:25
we're making an arm that is --
422
1045260
2000
17:27
we're starting with,
423
1047260
2000
17:29
the 25th percentile female --
424
1049260
3000
17:32
that will have a hand that wraps around,
425
1052260
2000
17:34
opens all the way,
426
1054260
2000
17:36
two degrees of freedom in the wrist and an elbow.
427
1056260
3000
17:39
So it'll be the smallest and lightest
428
1059260
2000
17:41
and the smartest arm ever made.
429
1061260
2000
17:43
Once we can do it that small,
430
1063260
2000
17:45
it's a lot easier making them bigger.
431
1065260
2000
17:47
So those are just some of our goals.
432
1067260
3000
17:50
And we really appreciate you all being here today.
433
1070260
4000
17:54
I'd like to tell you a little bit about the dark side,
434
1074260
2000
17:56
with yesterday's theme.
435
1076260
2000
17:58
So Amanda came jet-lagged,
436
1078260
2000
18:00
she's using the arm,
437
1080260
2000
18:02
and everything goes wrong.
438
1082260
2000
18:04
There was a computer spook,
439
1084260
2000
18:06
a broken wire,
440
1086260
2000
18:08
a converter that sparked.
441
1088260
2000
18:10
We took out a whole circuit in the hotel
442
1090260
2000
18:12
and just about put on the fire alarm.
443
1092260
2000
18:14
And none of those problems could I have dealt with,
444
1094260
3000
18:17
but I have a really bright research team.
445
1097260
2000
18:19
And thankfully Dr. Annie Simon was with us
446
1099260
3000
18:22
and worked really hard yesterday to fix it.
447
1102260
2000
18:24
That's science.
448
1104260
2000
18:26
And fortunately, it worked today.
449
1106260
2000
18:28
So thank you very much.
450
1108260
2000
18:30
(Applause)
451
1110260
14000
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7