Awesome Biotech

For many years, prosthetics have been primitive, static objects. Thanks to modern biotechnology, people facing lost limbs can look forward to devices like this brain-controlled robotic arm from Esper Bionics. It has independently-moving fingers, a swiveling wrist, and the ability to perform fine-grained actions like picking up a knife and cutting with it.

As biotech advances, the quality of life for disabled people has the potential to improve dramatically. Bloomberg introduces us to engineers from MIT’s Biomechatronics Lab, including Everett Lawson, who had an experimental kind of amputation which lets him directly control a robotic leg and foot with his mind.

While the world certainly can feel like a horrible place some days, it’s videos like these that give us hope for the future. Watch in awe as a man who is paralyzed from the neck down was able to walk and move his arms thanks to a prototype robotic exoskeleton controlled by his own brain. More here.

Used to improve vision after macular degeneration, this Implantable Mini Telescope (IMT) is a 4mm long prosthesis that is implanted in one eye; it enlarges images up to 3x.