Biomedical engineering students at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Ind., designed a robotic arm prosthetic arm for a young boy with a condition known as bilateral radial and ulnar hypoplasia, leaving him with no forearms and only two tiny fingers on each hand, according to an article on the Rose-Hulman Website.
The device was specially designed for him by senior biomedical engineering students Sara Telezyn, EJ Oruche and Clay Britton, according to the article.
The students’ project, supervised by professors Kay C Dee, Glen Livesay and Renee Rogge. The prosthetic limb works with the Michael Amerman’s fully functional fingers. The resulting device extends his reach, and allows him greater independence, while being fun and simple to operate, according to the article.
Biomedical engineers developed a robotic arm to very precisely resurface the knee before replacing it. In order to do this, a 3-D image of the knee is generated, providing a live-action view of the knee during surgery. A stereo camera system constantly updates surgeons on the location of the diseased portion of the knee–this keeps the healthy parts untouched. Visual alarms and artificial resistance tell the surgeons when they are too close to healthy parts. After the resurfacing is done, the implant is placed.
Virtual realityMore than 15 million Americans have osteoarthritis in their knees, and about 600,000 of them could be helped by a partial knee replacement. A new way to fix arthritic knees that uses robots and computers is helping patients walk out of the hospital the same day of surgery.Once an avid runner, Harvey Saff was surprised when he was sidelined with knee osteoarthritis.”It felt like a knife going right through me,” said Saff. “That’s the only description that can aptly describe it.”
