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Thread: Solar powered skin helps Prosthetic Limbs

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    Lightbulb Solar powered skin helps Prosthetic Limbs

    Solar powered skin helps Prosthetic Limbs Get Better Feeling...



    Skin Powered by the Sun? Energy-Saving Prosthetic Limbs Get Better Feeling
    March 23, 2017 — Amputees with prosthetic limbs may soon have much a better sense of touch, temperature and texture, thanks to the energy-saving power of the sun, British researchers said on Thursday.
    While prosthetics are usually fully powered using batteries, a new prototype from University of Glasgow researchers opens up the possibility for so-called "solar-powered skin," which would include better sense capabilities than current technology. "If an entity is going out in a sunny day, then they won't need any battery" to activate their senses, said Ravinder Dahiya, a research fellow at the university and a leader of the study. "They can feel, without worrying about battery." The technology involves installing a thin layer of pure carbon around a prosthetic arm, hand or leg. This allows light to pass through it and be easily used as solar energy, the researchers said in a research paper.



    Ravinder Dahiya of the University of Glasgow’s School of Engineering poses with the prosthetic hand developed by his team at Glasgow University, Scotland



    The sun can provide up to 15 times more energy than is usually needed to power a prosthetic limb, Dahiya said. This extra — and renewable — energy can be used to power sensors that increase sense and feeling in a limb, so much so that the prosthetic can feel pressure, temperature and texture like natural skin, the paper said. "The skin is sensitive to touch and pressure, so when you touch the skin there you will know what point you are contacting and how much force you are applying," Dahiya said, describing the prototype. The scientists are the first to develop a model for solar-powered prosthetic skin, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.


    The technology could also increase the functionality of robots, allowing them to have a better understanding of what they touch and interact with, according to Dahiya. If robots had limbs that are sensitive to touch and pressure they would be less likely to make errors or injure humans, he said. The researchers hope to further develop the prototype in the next two years, Dahiya said. Eventually, he hopes to power the limb's motors with the renewable energy as well - rather than just the skin. "Because we are saving a lot of energy, our vision is that ... if we store this energy in some way we will be able to also power the motors with the energy," he said. "The prosthetic will be fully energy autonomous."


    http://www.voanews.com/a/skin-powere...s/3778470.html

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    Thats amazing, one day we really will have lifelike cyborgs. SciFi of my youth will all come to be reality
    LETS GO BRANDON
    F Joe Biden

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    waltky (03-24-2017)

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    Prosthetics give hope to Boko Haram victims in Nigeria...

    Prosthetics gives hope to Boko Haram victims
    Wed, May 09, 2018 - Njidda Maidugu breaks into a broad smile as he wobbles on his artificial leg with the support of crutches as a nurse walks alongside, helping him to keep his balance.
    Maidugu, 35, never thought he would walk on two legs again after he lost his right limb in a Boko Haram suicide bomb attack at a checkpoint in Maiduguri, northeast Nigeria, in 2016. “It feels like a miracle to walk with two legs again, I’m happy,” the fuel station attendant said at the National Orthopedic Hospital in the northern city of Kano. “These are my first steps on two legs in two years and I feel like a toddler learning to walk,” he said, looking down at his new plastic leg outside a prosthetics workshop. Maidugu was one of about 130 people who lost limbs in Boko Haram attacks and have been fitted with free artificial replacements in a project run by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The ICRC set up the limb fitting workshop at the hospital in August 2016 to provide prosthetics to amputees from the three northeastern states worst hit by the Muslim insurgency.

    The jihadist violence, now in its ninth year, has killed at least 20,000 people and left thousands of others with life-changing injuries. “Half of the 262 patients we have fitted with prosthetics are [Boko Haram] war victims,” project head Jacques Forget said. “The primary focus of the project is to cater for amputees from the conflict, women and children,” he said. The Boko Haram conflict has destroyed the livelihoods of millions of people in a region that was already desperately poor even before the violence began. Most of the population in northeast Nigeria live on less than US$2 a day. That makes prosthetic limbs — which cost on average nearly US$700 (585 euros) — prohibitively expensive. As well as those injured by the bombs and bullets of Boko Haram, other beneficiaries include diabetics, victims of car crashes and industrial accidents.


    A technician looks at unfinished parts of a prosthetic in the artificial limb fitting workshop operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross inside the Dala National Orthopedic Hospital in Kano, Nigeria

    Babagana Habu, for example, hopped around with the help of a stick for 13 years after losing a leg in an accident with a grinding machine, until he heard about the project. “My parents were too poor to get me crutches to walk with,” said the 25-year-old recharge card vendor from Damaturu, the capital of Yobe State. Most of the cases from the Islamist insurgency have been wounded by gunshots or improvised explosive devices, Forget said. “Not many mines are used in the conflict, unlike in many conflict areas I have worked in,” said Forget, who has worked on artificial limbs for almost 50 years. Amputees are first assessed in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, where the ICRC runs a medical clinic that caters specifically for victims of Boko Haram attacks.

    The clinic complements services provided by a handful of state-run hospitals in the city which has been overstretched by the sharp rise in emergency cases from the extremist violence. The conflict has seen an exodus of doctors and other health service personnel from Maiduguri, leaving a huge gap that other medical charities are working to fill. The University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, which treats the bulk of trauma patients, has only one consultant orthopedic surgeon. Once potential beneficiaries of artificial limbs are screened, they are then sent for a fitting in Kano, nearly 600km away. Forget works on average on five amputees a week, which is just a fraction of the number of those seeking his services.

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