Tech Shout!

Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) has announced that it will demonstrate the first though controlled ‘Bionic Arm’ at the Texas Instruments Developers Conference India (TIDC) to be held on November 30 and December 1, 2006 at Bangalore.

The Boston Digital Arm from Liberating Technologies (Massachusetts, USA) is driven using electrical or myoelectric signals that are sent from the brain enabling amputees to rotate the wrist and arm, bend at the elbow, grip with the hand and, just as someone with a fully functioning arm would.

Andrew Soukup, C2000 marketing manager, TI said, “When Liberating Technologies developed their system, they considered both MCUs and digital signal controllers. They selected TI’s C2000 controllers because of their vastly superior abilities to generate pulse width modulated (PWM) signals for the most efficient method of driving the DC motors that are used in prostheses. One TI digital signal controller gave Liberating Technologies the ability to drive five motors, expandable to nine with an add-on module. In contrast, some competing solutions require two MCUs to drive only three motors.”

Until now, artificial arms have been mechanically controlled requiring users to physically control artificial arms by flexing their shoulders to actuate a pulley system. The ‘bionic arm’ was the grand winner in the “Personal Health” category in the “Best of What’s new Awards” organized annually by Popular Science magazine.

The bionic arm is dramatically more flexible and capable than most prosthetic devices, due to the control-optimized performance and integration offered by TI’s TMS320C2000 DSP based digital signal controllers.

TI’s C2000 controllers offer the first bionic arm with the performance and integration to process signals from myoelectric sensors to control up to five motors, allowing users to accomplish tasks like reaching for and grabbing an object at the same time.

Traditional artificial limbs are limited to controlling only three joints one at a time the elbow, wrist and hand. Liberating Technologies identified control system inflexibility as the primary limiting factor in upper limb prosthetic performance and was determined to leverage the latest advancements in control technology when developing the Boston Digital Arm.