History was made May 9th 2014 when the US Federal Drug Administration approved the sale of the Deka Arm, a robotic prosthetic arm capable of ten distinct movements and controlled by electrical signals sent by an electromyogram connected to the muscles of the amputee. This device will change the lives of numerous amputees by transforming them into cyborgs- humans with robotic arms, capable of coping more effectively with the loss of their arms than with any prior prosthetic.
Christy Foreman of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health stated that “The Deka Arm System may allow some people to perform more complex tasks than they can with current prostheses in a way that more closely resembles the natural motion of the arm,” in a statement at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health.
The new technology is delicate enough to pick up and move a carton of eggs or open an envelope. Something its predecessors found impossible to do ease.
The project was intended to aid our wounded veterans and was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the US Army Research Office. The device was developed by these offices with the help of Dean Kamen (the inventor of Segway) and his Deka Research team.
Source: Arm
