While I am away for another week and posting on this blog is sparse, enjoy the below video of a cute little robot reaching for its dream. The video called "REACH" is Luke Randall's entry in the Cannes Short Film Corner competition.

The online version of the IEEE Spectrum magazine has posted a video describing Dean Kamen's Luke Arm protheses that I wrote about a couple of days ago. The video is describes many of the Luke Arm's capabilities and shows one volunteer amputee who is testing the robot arm and he can now do things that he hadn't been able to do for many years before. Definitely a video worth a look.

Watch the Luke Arm video here.

The DARPA funded robotic arm prosthesis known as "Luke arm" and designed by Dean Kamen is soon to go into clinical trials, the last step before it could become available to amputees in desperate need for a prosthetic arm that actually works. You might known Kamen from his well publicized Segway HT platform that unfortunately did not revolutionize our lives as initially predicted; that said, Kamen has been a prolific inventor.

What makes the Luke Arm so much better than prosthesis currently on the market is its advanced dexterity. The arm has 18 degrees of freedom only 4 degrees of freedom sigh of a biological arm and many more than the 3 degrees of freedom available in arm prosthesis today. In addition, high quality electronics and software allow for fine control of the arm which will allow amputees to perform many more complex task than they ever could before.

The arm has motor control fine enough for test subjects to pluck chocolate-covered coffee beans one by one, pick up a power drill, unlock a door, and shake a hand. Six preconfigured grip settings make this possible, with names like chuck grip, key grip, and power grip. The different grips are shortcuts for the main operations humans perform daily.

Thinks look promising for the technology which is scheduled to go clinical trials some time this year. If Kamen's group is successful in keeping the arm's cost to something reasonable compared to current technology, then the Luke Arm could be of huge help to the more than 6000 upper extremity amputees a year in the Unites States alone.

Sarah Adee has written an extensive article at the IEEE Spectrum blog describing the history, technology, and future of the "Luke Arm." It is definitely worth a read if you want to know more about this revolutionary technology.