You know what, wireless prosthetics could be useful even for those of us who have both hands.
We can basically go full General Grievous and do so many things at once
Great, now my hands can get hacked.
Is this the same girl we’ve been seen pictures of since she was a little kid? She’s probably so used to it by now it’s second nature. Though at first I thought it was Drew Barrymore from the thumbnail
We’re this much closer to The Addams Family
I want to see a rocket fist
I wonder if data going into the hands is also wireless when they’re attached. Seems like a rather critical set of functions to go with wireless instead of a hard connection. Maybe wireless fidelity has improved enough that concerns about things like interference aren’t as big as they used to be.
I build and fit orthotics and prosthetics…this is mainly just a marketing gimmick. The myoelectric sensors that feed the data to the terminal device are built into the socket of the prosthetic. There’s no real reason to wear the socket without the hand, and you can’t operate the hand without the socket.
The hard connections from the end of the socket and the hand are very durable, and they typically don’t really have any issues with wear. I don’t think fidelity is a big issue because there’s not a ton of information being transferred, the myoelectric sensors haven’t really changed a bunch in the last 40 years and the amount of information being sent is minimal.
The biggest downside I foresee is that if you had different terminal devices, you’re probably going to have to pair them to the socket whenever you want to switch. When the traditional hard connection is just plug and play. That and you are just adding extra things to break in devices that are built to take a beating.
There’s one other advantage to wireless here: a bionic prosthetic is moving a lot, and that’s not great for wire harnesses or connectors. Going wireless potentially allows for greater range of movement (or at least removes the engineering challenge of making it durable long term).
That would be a more interesting line of questioning than all the viral stuff about “mind control” and whatnot.
It may just be cheaper to slap a wireless connection in there than to engineer routing cables through a fully mobile articulation AND keep the whole thing water resistant. I bet whatever the real answer there it’s fascinating.
I wish that worked better than Deus Ex collabs and morning show interviews, but given how often I’ve seen this pop up the last couple of weeks it clearly is not.
Deus Ex is a horror universe. Example:
You work as produce loader. One day, your coworker comes in with a fancy new set of robot arms. He can lift three times as much as you can and work twice as fast. Your hours start getting cut back, boss doesn’t need you anymore. You lose your job. You apply for a new one, but it’s the same story everywhere: companies want cyborgs. So you spend the last of your savings on a set of bionic arms. They work great, and you land a new job. It’s enough to pay for the anti rejection meds and your living expenses. Two years later, a new model comes out. Efficiency improves even more. Your services aren’t needed anymore, and you can’t afford an upgrade.
You’re homeless now, and you can’t afford the rejection meds. So you sit on the side of the street with a cardboard sign and an empty hat, waiting for your arms to rot off your body as your immune tears the connection apart.
Drag wouldn’t buy prosthetics from a company that associates themselves with that image.
I wonder if they’re banking on wireless chips lasting longer than physical ports. Though making them wireless also means batteries and charging ports, two parts notorious for failing.
You could always do both and fall back on external power when the battery dies. Thats how laptops often do it.
Until the pillow starts to get spicy…
One of the things that they keep saying is that this is the lightest bionic available, so it’s possible that physical ports are simply too heavy.
Batteries weigh more than ports though.
I can see a bunch of geeky engineers in the planning meeting. “Wouldn’t it be cool if it could detach and still work. Think of how she could mess with people.”
This 100% accurate! Recreating the Addams Family scenes must have been part of the commissioning process.
Off the main topic of the article here, but that was a roller coaster of thoughts for me with the Title and the link thumbnail-
Kinda looks like Drew Berrymore in the thumbnail, so “Bionic Girl Debuts…” oh cool, new movie—-wait, Drew lost her arms and now has prosthetics? Opened the article……Ohhh…
All fun and games til her arm gets hacked lol
Damn, if she has any tech-savvy siblings, this would introduce a whole new level of “why are you hitting yourself”
The flesh is weak.
Now with 100% more grip strength.Wild man. I was a little put off on how the lady was cutting a tomato while wearing it (it’s an embedded promo clip for the Hero Pro).
She was holding the knife backwards and it just looked really weird, but then I realized she might not have had hands her entire life so she never learned the proper way to do it.
For real. Not every stupid subreddit needs a Lemmy clone. Keep that eighth grade humor trash back where it belongs.
