Zac Vawter Controls a Prosthetic Leg with Nothing More than His Thoughts!

Check out this video of Zac Vawter controlling a prosthetic leg with his thoughts! In the related WSJ article, “Man Controls Artificial Leg Using only His Brain,” Zac describes his experience with this awesome technology. Comparing his usual prosthetic leg and this new thought-controlled bionic one, the difference is “night and day.” “Going upstairs with my normal prosthetic, my sound leg goes up first for every step…With this I go foot-over-foot up the stairs and down the stairs,” says Zac. This is the first time a person has been able to control a prosthetic limb with his thoughts.

How does it work? According to Dr. Hargrove, one of the lead researchers, his team developed complex electrodes that attach to the skin of the limb and a software algorithm that can read the electric messages from the brain. The algorithm translates the signals into movements of the prosthetic ankle and knee.

Pretty impressive stuff! As Daniel Ferris, a biomedical engineering expert at the University of Michigan, agrees, this accomplishment “takes us closer to the point where we’re going to have robust commercial products that use signals from a person’s brain to let them walk.”