Friday, 13 July 2012

Bionic Arm : The Divine touch of Electronics!!

I have been pursuing my degree in biomedical engineering for the past 2 years without any incentive.I had always thought "Why do people give a damn about this field of engineering when all you have to do is to sit around some machines which read the heart beat of a patient or diagnose cancer cells in the other???"  Well it turned out that all my thoughts had gone in the wrong direction.I had been in complete darkness about how this field can be a service to the society.
                                
                                            A few days back,relaxing in my couch,skipping through channels on TV, I came across a documentary about some prosthetic limb fixed on some high school student who can come back to his normal life with this 'scientific boon' as he calls it.This is when it struck me that we indeed can change the life of another one in a positive way.



        A Bionic arm is a prosthetic limb that can be controlled by the person using his brain,his thoughts.It acts like a normal arm allowing you to do stuff you do most usually.It could never replace the presence of the real  arm but then,'something is always better than nothing'. The only problem is that there is no sensory nerves in the bionic hand which can cause difficulty as there is no sense of touch or feel.It may take  months to get used to the 'new hand'.








         A Bionic arm works on the basis of nerve impulses sent by brain which are in fact small bio-electric signals.These electric signals are recieved using sensors which are amplified and then these signals are used by the microcontroller to run the motors of the fingers.
                                                 Biosensors like myoelectric prosthesis are used for detecting the nerve impulses from the user's nervous or muscular systems.
 The controller then relays the signal to the motor or the actuator and interprets the feedback to the user through the biosensors.
                                                  
The actuators are motors which allows the functioning of the hand as it is.

The world is changing ........with the disabled becoming the able......they will not be looked upon with sympathy any more.......the science is growing!!!