We’ve seen lots of cool prosthetics in recent years, including ones that you control with your damn mind. Still, the ones we tend to see in science fiction are a bit cooler—for now, that is. Open Bionics aims to buck that trend with some new prosthetics designed to mimic the ones from Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex games, and the designs are looking pretty slick so far.
The capabilities, on the other hand, are another story, but things are coming along on that front, too. However, as cool as it’d be for us all to be running around punching things with our super strong robot arms (or whatever less violent applications you’d prefer), the big thing for prosthetics right now—as with lots of aspects of healthcare, unfortunately—is making sure that the people who need them can afford them.
That’s why it’s great that Open Bionics uses 3D printing technology to reduce the cost of the prosthetics they make. In the video, they mention that the designs for the replica of Adam Jensen’s arm from Deus Ex: Human Revolution will be open source, which means anyone with access to a 3D printer will be able to produce one for themselves. The arm will be on display at E3 and other gaming shows with a motion capture control mechanism to give people who might not know about advances in prosthetics an idea of what’s possible.
(via Engadget)
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