Swiss researchers have equipped people with a third arm. The extra robotic arm can be controlled by breathing without affecting control of the two normal arms, according to a new study in the journal Science Robotics.
The study published on Wednesday is part of the ‘Third-Arm Project’ of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), which aims to equip people with a wearable robotic arm to support them with daily tasks or to provide assistance to provide for rescue operations. activities.
The main motivation behind this research was to better understand the nervous system, study leader Silvestro Micera said in a statement from EPFL. “By challenging the brain to do something completely new, you can find out whether it is capable of doing it,” says Micera. So the question was: are our brains even capable of controlling more than two arms?
“This knowledge can then be used, for example, to design aids for people with disabilities or protocols for rehabilitation after a stroke,” says Micera. To see whether the human brain is capable of operating a third arm, the scientists first built a virtual environment. Using virtual reality glasses, the subjects in the study saw a third hand between their left and right hands.
Third hand with two thumbs
This third hand, to be symmetrical, had a thumb on either side. “We drew a symmetrical hand to avoid distortion in favor of the left or right hand,” explains Giulia Dominijanni. A belt was fastened around the subjects’ chest to measure the movements of the diaphragm.
Users were then asked to attack specific targets with their center arm. The movement of the diaphragm – and therefore the breathing that these movements produced – controlled the hand. The users quickly learned to control the extra limb, as EPFL said, by using both natural hands at the same time.
First tests in the real world
The system was tested on 61 people during more than 150 sessions. Controlling the third arm via the diaphragm had no influence on the subjects’ coherent speech. In a second step, the researchers tested the control of the diaphragm on a real robot arm. For this purpose, the test subjects would be equipped with a simplified arm consisting of an extendable rod. According to the researchers, the subjects also quickly learned to control this.
In a next step, the researchers want to investigate more complex robotic devices and use different control strategies, as EPFL announced. For example, attempts have been made in the past to control a third arm using ear muscles.
Source: Krone
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