In an article for Forbes, Charles Towers-Clark spotlights how MIT researchers developed a surgical technique that allows amputees to receive feedback from prosthetic limbs. The technique, Towers-Clark writes, “uses a muscle graft from another part of the body to complete the muscle pair, avoiding rejection which currently occurs in around 20% of cases, and allowing the patient to communicate naturally with the new limb.”
MIT researchers have developed a surgical technique that could make prosthetic limbs feel more natural, writes Karen Weintraub for Scientific American. “With this approach, we’re very confident that the human will actually feel position, will actually feel speed, will actually feel force,” says Prof. Hugh Herr. “It’ll completely feel like their own limb.”
Guardian reporter Nicola Davis spotlights Prof. Hugh Herr’s development of an autonomous exoskeleton device that could reduce the amount of energy humans use to walk. “We are taking a first principle approach, and joint by joint understanding deeply what has to be done scientifically and technologically to augment a human,” Herr explains.
Writing for Wired, Juan Enriquez highlights the MIT Center for Extreme Bionics, which was launched in an effort to develop technologies that augment human performance and could help eliminate disabilities. Enriquez writes that the center’s “long-term ambitions are breathtaking.”
CNN’s Jessica Ravitz describes how MIT researchers are working with surgeons from Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital to outfit a patient with a prosthetic limb that can be controlled by the brain. The patient will have “wireless sensors implanted in his muscles, which will integrate with the robotic prosthetic being created for him.”
MIT researchers are developing a bionic prosthesis that can be controlled by the wearer’s brain waves, reports Marie Szaniszlo for The Boston Herald. Graduate student Tyler Clites explains that the limb’s “versatility goes far beyond the technology that is currently available.”
Boston Globe reporter Eric Moskowitz writes that MIT researchers are developing a prosthetic limb that can be controlled by the user’s brain waves. Researchers in Prof. High Herr’s lab collaborated with surgeons at Brigham and Women’s Hospital to “devise an amputation surgery that could prepare a limb for a brain-controlled prosthetic.”
ABC News visits Prof. Hugh Herr’s lab to explore his work developing bionic limbs aimed at augmenting human capabilities and ending “profound human suffering caused by disability.” Herr says he “always had the dream of developing exoskeletal structures that would enable anyone to walk with less energy, run with less energy, move faster with complete ease.”
In an article for The Atlantic, Jessa Gamble highlights MIT alumnus David Sengeh’s work, which is focused on designing better-fitting prosthetics by examining a patient’s internal anatomy using MRI technology. “We’ve been able to make the [world’s] first socket entirely from quantitative methods,” says Sengeh. “No human hands were involved in defining the shape, including the cut lines and material properties of the socket.”
Prof. Hugh Herr has been named the recipient of Spain’s 2016 Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, according to the AP. Herr’s achievements “have had a major impact on people with disabilities, through adaptive knee prostheses for femoral amputees, and ankle-and-foot orthopedic prostheses for those with clubfoot or disabilities caused by cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis.”
Prof. Hugh Herr speaks with Breanna Draxler of Popular Science about the future of bionics. Herr explains that he is “intrigued by the possibility of embedding humanity—our ideas and our creativity—into designable bodies. The artificial limbs we create can be just as beautiful and expressive as our own bodies made of innate cells.”
Jon Christian reports for The Boston Globe on FitSocket, a device created by researchers in MIT’s Biomechatronics group that gathers data used to create personalized prosthetic sockets. “We’re treating the body as a mechanical thing, because it is,” explains graduate student Arthur Petron.
Prof. Hugh Herr speaks about his work developing bionic limbs on Popular Science’s Futuropolis podcast. When asked about what sort of capabilities bionics may be able to give humans in the future, Herr explains his view that, “If something is possible given physical law, given the laws of nature, then I think ultimately humans will explore it.”
Writing for Smithsonian’s section on the American Ingenuity Award winners, Matthew Shaer examines Professor Hugh Herr’s work developing bionic limbs. “To spend any time with Hugh Herr is to understand that he is already thinking beyond a world where bionics are used only to enable wounded people and toward a future where bionics are an integral part of everyday life.”
Mark Shanahan and Meredith Goldstein of The Boston Globe report that Professor Hugh Herr, postdoctoral associate Xu Liu and graduate student Steve Ramirez were recipients of the 2014 American Ingenuity Awards. Liu and Ramirez were honored for their discoveries on how memories form and Herr for his development of a bionic leg.