Bionic technologies have a special place in popular culture. From the Six Million Dollar Man of yesterday to the Iron Man of today, bionic technologies hint at a future right around the corner. These technologies are not far off. There are bionic eyes, bionic ears, advanced prosthetics and brain wave scanners are in development right now. This future is here now, and those of us who need these technologies the most are beginning to benefit.
One of the most prominent areas in which we’re seeing bionic technologies move forward involves the treatment of the physically disabled. Having grown up with a wheelchair-bound mother, I know firsthand some of the challenges they face, and it’s comforting to know that we’re working on making these challenges a non-issue. To that end, we’re seeing a whole range of tech being used; everything from bionic eyes to artificial limbs to brain-computer headsets.
Here’s just a few ways in which modern bionics is slowly transforming humankind – and crushing physical disability beneath its heel in the process.
Emotiv’s Headsets Could Control Future Bionic Technologies
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The Emotiv EPOC and Insight are what’s known as brain-computer interfaces. Equipped with a wireless EEG system, the 5-channel wireless headset records the wearer’s brain-waves and translates them into meaningful data. It’s built with a number of advanced detection algorithms that allow it to, among other things, interpret basic mental commands, detect and analyze facial expressions, and measure mental focus, performance, and stress. Not only could the basic technology behind the headsets be used to help quadriplegics use the computer, it could potentially be used to control bionic technologies as well.
ReWalk’s Going To Get You Back On Your Feet
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Billing itself as the world’s first personal exoskeleton, ReWalk provides powered hip and knee movement to its wearer. What that accomplishes is quite simple: it allows paraplegics to walk, something many of them thought they’d never be able to do again. Not only that, it offers a number of very real benefits to patients rehabilitating from a spinal cord injury. It’s one of the most exciting bionic technologies to arrive to date, and one of the first exoskeletons designed for the public.
The suit’s motion is controlled through an on-board computer which works through a system of motion sensors built in to the device. By tracking the movement of the user’s body, it allows for controlled walking that mimics the natural gait patterns of an able-bodied human being. Studies have shown that this provides significant health benefits to the wearer.
“ReWalking is much more than walking,” said ReWalk Chairman Jeff Dykan. “ReWalk provides paralyzed individuals with the ability to stand and walk, to look someone in the eye, to hug and be hugged. These are simple acts which many of our ReWalkers thought they would never be able to do again,” he added. “When you take that into account in addition to the health benefits, it underscores just how monumental a day this is for the SCI community here in the U.S.”
ReWalk Bionic Exoskeleton | Gallery
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Halo brings Bionic Ear Technology to iPhone
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Historically, traditional hearing aids haven’t really played nice with modern technology such as smartphones. Not only that, hearing aids are in rather short supply among those who need them; only as fraction of patients who are actually suffering from hearing loss ever get help for it. Starkey – an organization known for the development of a wide range of hearing-enhancement technology – plans to eliminate both problems at once with the introduction of Halo . Designed to be used with the iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, Halo connects with the TruLink Hearing Control App in order to remotely manage one’s hearing aid. This includes streaming media and phone calls, controlling the volume, and eliminating background noise.
The Bionic Eye Will Make Blindness Obsolete
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The Bionic Eye is exactly what it sounds like – a fully functional, artificial vision device. Still in development, the completed Eye will consist of a small digital camera, an external processor, and a microchip implant connected to the brain through stimulating electrodes. The digital camera itself isn’t actually installed in the eye socket (yet); it’s attached to a pair of glasses which transmit a constant signal to the implanted chip. This signal is converted to electrical impulses, which travel along the optic nerve and up to the brain. The end result is that the wearer of the glasses can actually see through the lens.
The technology has limitations, of course – it won’t be of any help to individuals with damaged optic nerves, nor will it be able to function if there’s damage to the wearer’s visual cortex. Compared to the bionic technologies of the past, however, this bionic eye is a giant leap forward.
DARPA’s Advanced Prosthetics Give Feeling Back to the Wounded
A common (and dreadful) side effect of war is that it tends to produce a great many amputees. Former soldiers all; these men and women wounded while fighting for their country often have to settle for cut-rate prosthetics, or simply learn to live without their missing limb (or limbs, as it were). From the sounds of things, DARPA has set out to change this . The military organization is currently working on something completely unprecedented – bionic limbs with artificial nerve endings. These artificial nerve clusters allow the wearer to control them with their mind; more importantly, they provide direct sensory feedback to the user – quite literally, they can feel. It is amongst the first bionic technologies to ever use the sense of touch in its systems.
FIT Makes Advanced Prosthetics Affordable For All
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Although the technology presented on this list is all well and good, none of it is necessarily affordable in developing countries – particularly for child amputees, who might need to be fitted with a new limb every year. That’s why FIT exists – an adjustable prosthetic leg designed above all else to be extremely affordable. The most interesting part about the leg is that it’s actually set up to ‘grow’ along with the child, allowing a young amputee to adjust the height and size to allow for continued use over the years.
The Dynavox T15 Is A Tablet That’s All About The Big Picture
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Although it’s not technically a bionic device, Dynavox’s T15 speech generation tablet is nonetheless a valuable asset to the mute – which is why it’s made the list.
Not everyone can use modern tablets. Our push towards making everything more compact has had the unfortunate side effect of making mobile technology somewhat inaccessible for vision-impaired individuals, particularly among the elderly. The T15 seeks to make this problem a non-issue. Featuring a 15.4 inch crystal screen, this massive tablet is designed for ease of use above all else. Supporting multiple input methods (direct select, scanning, and head mouse controls), the T15 makes communication for the mute simple, fast, and flexible.
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Having grown up with a wheelchair-bound mother, I know firsthand some of the challenges faced by the differently-abled. Certain things that the able-bodied take for granted – a task as simple as climbing a flight of stairs, reading a book, listening to music, or even simply browsing the Internet – could be completely outside the realms of possibility for them. It’s anything but an easy life – which is why it’s great to see that our society’s taking steps to make it easier.
Thanks for reading! If you dig this stuff as much as we do, check out our other future-focused features:
- The Weird World Of Wearable Tech: 9 Of The Most Unusual Wearables
- Seven Futuristic Cities That Could Define the World of Tomorrow
- Dreamcar 2020: Turning 10 Trends in Design into the Car of The Future
- 7 Strange 3D Printed Objects from Organs to Bikinis
- 8 Humanoid Robots with Cool (and Creepy) Human Qualities
- Future Gaming Technology : 7 Systems Revolutionizing How We Play
Strange 3D Printed Objects – It’s not inaccurate to refer to 3D printing as a sort of new age industrial revolution. Never before have we been equipped with such a capacity to create; never before has the manufacturing process been so decentralized as it is today. The 3D printer could well be a revolutionary invention, and if the technology is further developed, it might well put many industries out of business. But that’s for the future.
As you all well know, whenever some new technology surfaces that allows people to create, there’s invariably going to be a group that uses it for…less than orthodox purposes. 3D printing is no exception. Even though the technology is still in its infancy, people have already used 3D printers to create some weird stuff, from mugshots printed using DNA to sculptures of unborn fetuses. Today, we’re going to look at some of the strange 3D printed objects from around the connected world.
Foodini Lets You Print Food
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This 3D printer uses nutritious ingredients to print food while you wait. The Foodini is a 3D printer by Natural Machines that creates a variety of meals at your direction. How it works is actually pretty simple: you select any of a number of pre-prepared, fresh ingredients, then load them into the printer. Once you’ve selected the meal you want to prepare, it’ll arrange everything for you with absolutely no fuss. In short, you’ll be able to make restaurant-quality meals (or at least meals that look like they’re restaurant quality) with little to no effort. Sweet, right?
The N12 Is The World’s First 3D Printed Bikini
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Say hello to the N12, the first article of clothing in the world created entirely with a 3D printer. From what the creators have said on their site, they hope that this will be the first of many products like it. The design itself is actually quite impressive, displaying an intricacy rarely seen in clothing. Plus – and I’d imagine this is the most important part – it’s apparently quite a comfortable wear, as well. Affordable, too. You can buy one yourself (along with a small selection of other strange 3D printed objects and accessories) here .
Me, I’m excited for when they start printing shirts pants. I feel like the ability to make one’s own clothes might throw a spanner in the works for the clothing industry, no?
MakerLove Makes 3D Printing A Little More…Intimate
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There are strange 3D printed objects, and then there’s this. MakerLove is a website that exists on the principle that people will choose to make certain items they might only wish to do privately. The site provides a wide variety of sex toys which can be printed with a 3D printer. Particularly enterprising users can even submit their own designs to a design contest on the site. Like a… Sigmund Freud shaped sex toy? I guess somebody out there thought it’d be a good idea.
The Minibuilders Are Crafting Entire Buildings
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In the future, there may no longer be construction crews. At least not as we know them today, anyway. That’s because – assuming researchers at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia get their way – cities of the future will be constructed by a team of robots called Minibuilders , which will craft them from the ground-up. This robotic swarm will be able to construct buildings of any size, with a level of efficiency human construction teams can only dream of. Even better, they suffer from none of the pitfalls commonly associated with 3D printing (such as having to build a printer large enough to accommodate the entire structure; a problem they ran into in China). What this basically means is that we’ll be able to erect cities almost as quickly as we can design them.
Modern Meadow Replaces Meat With…Something Else
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There’s more to 3D printed food than what we can prepare at home. Modern Meadow is a startup funded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel, and it deals in a very peculiar product: 3D printed meat and leather. It bills this ‘bioprinted meat’ as an environmentally friendly means of enjoying animal protein; one which cuts out a big chunk of the process involved in meat and leather production. According to Modern Meadow co-founder Andras Forgacs, the process by which we currently prepare our meat is a horrendously wasteful one, and “an environmental train wreck.” They hope that their synthetic meat-printing process – which has already managed to build three-dimensional tissues and organ structures – can cut down on the excess waste, and save a few lives in the process.
Print Your Own Flesh And Blood With Organovo
Organovo follows a similar principle to Modern Meadow. The difference is that while the latter uses the technology to create environmentally-conscientious hamburger alternatives, Organovo is creating full-fledged human body parts. Yes, you read that right – this organization is basically printing living human tissue. Currently, the technology can produce tissues of about twenty or so cell layers thick, comprised of multiple cell types. Already, they’ve created a functioning human liver; there’s no telling what else might come of this technology. Pretty soon, we might even be able to replace lost limbs and organs.
The Smartboard Takes Surfing To A Whole New Level
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One of the best things about 3D printing is that it allows a nearly unprecedented level of freedom when it comes to designing a product. The user can literally make something exactly the way they want it with absolutely no fuss. The Smartboard is indicative of this trend. It’s basically a surfboard, printed from the ground up for an individual surfer. Every single aspect of the board is customizable, from the stiffness to the size to the shape. It is quite literally an extension of the surfer who uses it – and that’s exactly as it should be. Now we’ve just gotta wait for all the other 3D printed products that are bound to follow – I don’t doubt there’ll be some good ones, for sure.
Strange 3D Printed Objects | Gallery
