Cyborg MIT prof touts iPhone-controlled power-jumping legs A cyborg MIT professor has developed and tested innovative lithium-ion powered prosthetic feet which can thrust a wearer off the ground just as normal biological ones can - or be adjusted (using an iPhone app, of course) for greater power, perhaps allowing remarkable leaping and running performance. Professor Hugh Herr is …
not iPhone controlled.
Also, doesn't the iPhone lack pretty much any bluetooth profile that would allow controlling/configuring this? I mean he'd be better off using a WinMo phone- at least the ones I've got- as they can set up bluetooth serial ports in a few lines of code. No idea about android or symbian, but WinMo 2003 up definitely can.
And anyway, would you want a piece of equipment you don't own or have any real say in the function of controlling your leg? And that's not just the iPhone- surely anyone could surreptitiously re-pair his leg with their phone assuming that he had the pairing button accessible? That's a recipe for a Wrong Trousers scenario if I ever saw one!
And Cybermen FTW. <tasteless> though in this guy's case it's more like the frozen wastes of toe-loss than telos. </tasteless>
I can just see it now. Thing gets built, then Apple pulls the upgrade AND the app thanks to their broken "approvals" process. Or an update has a bug, in which case good luck getting anything fixed in under a month.
Meanwhile, your legs are walking from London to Edinburgh whether you want them to or not.
I guess you will also be happy to wear a solar hat to power you bionic legs ?
I think that the biggest problem will always be energy storage.
The testers tell him that their limit is because of their real leg and not the bionic one.
Let those testers walk every day and see how long it will take before the limit becomes the bionic leg. For fairness he should also limit the weight of the bionic leg and battery to the weight of a real leg. Otherwise the real leg is actually carrying the power supply for the bionic leg.
I think the advances are great but I am still waiting for some real neuron interface bionic leg before I will consider it an upgrade.
Apart from the Bluetooth issue of not being able to pair up a JesusPhone with the legs anyway, surely the other problem would be that the jPhone doesn't allow background tasks. Every time you wanted to connect and get the legs to do something would involve having to find the "Walk/Run" app from all the icons you have, run it, and then tell it what you want to do, and all the while hoping that no-one calls you when you are using the jPhone to control your legs while running after the bus.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
