Your third limb

In 2012, Zac Vawter conquered 103 flights of stairs at the Willis Tower in Chicago while wearing a prosthetic leg controlled with his mind. Previously, any leg amputees who needed to climb up the stairs would require their good leg to push them upwards or use a remote to control the movement of their prosthetics.

 

This new mind controlled prosthetic was a collaboration between the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) and a team of designers at the Vanderbilt University and Freedom Innovations (a prosthetics company). They had a goal which was to enable these prosthetics to be a natural as much as possible using the Targeted Muscle Reinnervation technology (Stinson, 2013).

 

The study is also funded by the US Army. They actually pumped US $8 million in funds to speed up research on such technology. As they are not only looking at helping amputees to get back on track, but they want to restore ‘full ability’ to all patients, not just otherwise able-bodied war veterans.