I bet you didn’t expect cyborgs to look like that. To be men who might have a case of plumber’s crack and use their mechanical appendages to eat more nachos while watching the game. I expected cyborgs to look like that. But not so soon. That is, not today.
That’s Chuck Hildreth, who lost both his arms at age 18 when he –ahem– grabbed a high tension wire. I don’t know why he grabbed a high tension wire but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Now that he’s been rewarded for this act of daring with a robotic arm, it probably seems like the smartest thing he ever did.
The arm is controlled by joystick attached to the foot, offers a full range of movement and it even tells Chuck how much pressure he’s exerting through a vibrating sensor on his lower back. This allows him to pick up objects like grapes without squashing them in his mechanical fingers. So the boys at DARPA will need to find a new game to amuse themselves. “Feed the Cyborg Grapes and Watch Him Cry” is now obsolete.
