Communications - April 2011

tive. Today, advanced prosthetic devices can cost more than $20,000, putting them outside the buying range of amputees living in developing nations. Several organizations are dedicated to creating low-cost prosthetics, especially for nations with large numbers of people who have lost limbs due to land-mines. One such project, Mobility for Each One, led by Canadian industrial designer Sébastien Dubois, has developed an energy-return prosthetic foot that can be locally produced for a mere $8. But as of yet, there is no project that operates as an analog to the One Laptop Per Child program, seeking to provide low-cost, sophisticated prosthetics to developing nations.

“For now, a sophisticated hand prosthesis will remain quite expensive,” says Sebelius. Harshbarger offers a similar perspective. “This is a difficult issue and one that I believe in addressing, though our work has largely been on reducing costs for the highest-capability systems for domestic users,” he says. As with any modern technology, production costs will come down over time, but the most advanced prosthetic devices are expected to remain expensive.

As the science of prosthetics matures, discussion about the ethics of using the technology as supplementary enhancement for healthy limbs rather than as replacement for lost limbs no doubt will become more complex. Artificial enhancement, a popular trope in speculative and science fiction, has a long history of advocates and detractors. What’s likely to turn out to be the first experimental augmentation with a healthy human appears to have been accomplished by British scientist Kev-

“hopefully,” says
Fredrik sebelius,
“we will be able
to achieve a level
of sophistication
so the user will not
see the prosthesis
as a tool, but rather
as an extension
of the body.”

in Warwick who, in 2002, had a device implanted in his arm to interface electrodes with his median nerve, allowing him to control a robotic arm by moving his own.

Advocating such uses of prosthet-
ics research might be called either
visionary or far-fetched, but there is
no disputing the notion that modern
prosthetics breakthroughs have led to
new ways of looking at ability versus
disability. In 2008, for example, South
African double-leg amputee Oscar Pis-
torius was ruled ineligible for the Sum-
mer Olympics because it was thought
that his carbon prosthetics gave him
a distinct mechanical advantage over
runners with ankles. An appeal led to
the ruling being overturned on the ba-
sis that there wasn’t enough conclusive
evidence. And, in the end, Pistorius
didn’t make the team. But many credit
the brouhaha as helping to reshape
global perceptions about disability.

Further Reading

Carrozza, M.C., Cappiello, G., Micera, S., Edin, B.B., Beccai, L., and Cipriani, C. Design of a cybernetic hand for perception and action, Biological Cybernetics 95, 6, Dec. 2006. Cipriani, C., Antfolk, C., Balkenius, C., Rosén, B., Lundborg, G., Carrozza, M.C., and Sebelius, F. A novel concept for a prosthetic hand with a bidirectional interface, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 56, 11, nov. 2009.

Gray, S.H.

Artificial Limbs (Innovation in Medicine; 21st Century Skills). Cherry Lake Publishing, north Mankato, Mn, 2008. Jia, X., Koenig, M.A., Zhang, X., Zhang, J., Chen, T., and Chen, Z. Residual motor signal in long-term human severed peripheral nerves and feasibility of neural signal controlled artificial limb, Journal of Hand Surgery 32, 5, May–June 2007. Kuniholm, J. Open arms: what prosthetic-arm engineering is learning from open source, crowdsourcing, and the video-game industry, IEEE Spectrum 46, 9, March 2009.

based in los angeles, Kirk L. Kroeker is a freelance editor and writer specializing in science and technology.

Milestones
Japan Prize and Other Awards

The Japan Prize foundation, national Academy of Engineering (nAE), and u. S. President obama recently recognized leading computer scientists for their research and leadership.

JaPan PRize
dennis Ritchie, retired, and Ken
Thompson, a distinguished
engineer at Google, were
awarded the 2011 Japan Prize in
information and communications
for developing unix. Ritchie and
Thompson will split the prize’s
$600,000 cash award.

nae memBeRs
The nAE elected nine members
in the field of computer science
and engineering. They are: Susan
dumais, microsoft Research;
daphne Koller, Stanford univer-
sity; hank Levy, university of
washington; Jitendra malik,
university of california, Berkeley;
nick mcKeown, Stanford
university; don norman,
northwestern university;
Ari Requischa, university of
Southern california; fred
Schneider, cornell university;
and mihalis Yannakakis,
columbia university. Jonathan
Rose, university of Toronto, was
elected as a foreign Associate.

PResiDentiaL mentoRinG a WaRD

maja J. matarić, a professor of computer science at the university of Southern california (uSc), received the u.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, mathematics, and Engineering mentoring in recognition of her work with K– 12 students, uSc students, and faculty colleagues.