Fair enough. You seem to be more knowledgeable about this than me. I get that its an inherent physics thing though I just meant that, theoretically at least, you could simply brute force grip strength in a way that you can’t brute force dexterity - at which point it becomes sensible to optimize for dexterity. I guess we’re not as close to that point as I assumed though.
A lot of it is limited by the amount of control an amputee would have. It’s hard to create something that is both stronger than the human grip with the same amount of control over how you exert that strength.
Some of the older myoelectric pincer type terminal devices had a slip reflex built into them. Where if the sensors in the pincer felt an object slipping, it would crank down harder. It had an average grip strength, but because of the nature of how pincers work, all that power was exerted into a much smaller inflexible area.
It worked fine on solid objects, but if you ever tried to use it on a person and that person tried pulling away…you could give someone a really really unpleasant pinch.
I’m of the opinion that regrowing lost limbs will be how the story of prosthetics eventually ends. Robotics just make too many compromises to come close to what evolution settled on. Even if you want to make crazy cyberpunk modifications, we can just alter or supplement our biology instead of replacing it.
Maybe? We are a bit far away from that atm, but you never know what’s around the corner with tech like crispr. I think the next step will probably be transplants. There’s a process called decellularization being developed where you wash away any genetic material from donor tissue. This does away with current issues surrounding organ rejection, but keeps the structural scaffolding of the tissue. We would still have to make advances in nerve integration for it to be feasible, but that’s advancing every year.
There have been limb transplants in the past, but they typically fail from rejection, or the patients elect to have them removed because they can’t get used to the new/diminished propeceptive capabilities of the limbs.
Fair enough. You seem to be more knowledgeable about this than me. I get that its an inherent physics thing though I just meant that, theoretically at least, you could simply brute force grip strength in a way that you can’t brute force dexterity - at which point it becomes sensible to optimize for dexterity. I guess we’re not as close to that point as I assumed though.
A lot of it is limited by the amount of control an amputee would have. It’s hard to create something that is both stronger than the human grip with the same amount of control over how you exert that strength.
Some of the older myoelectric pincer type terminal devices had a slip reflex built into them. Where if the sensors in the pincer felt an object slipping, it would crank down harder. It had an average grip strength, but because of the nature of how pincers work, all that power was exerted into a much smaller inflexible area.
It worked fine on solid objects, but if you ever tried to use it on a person and that person tried pulling away…you could give someone a really really unpleasant pinch.
I’m of the opinion that regrowing lost limbs will be how the story of prosthetics eventually ends. Robotics just make too many compromises to come close to what evolution settled on. Even if you want to make crazy cyberpunk modifications, we can just alter or supplement our biology instead of replacing it.
Maybe? We are a bit far away from that atm, but you never know what’s around the corner with tech like crispr. I think the next step will probably be transplants. There’s a process called decellularization being developed where you wash away any genetic material from donor tissue. This does away with current issues surrounding organ rejection, but keeps the structural scaffolding of the tissue. We would still have to make advances in nerve integration for it to be feasible, but that’s advancing every year.
There have been limb transplants in the past, but they typically fail from rejection, or the patients elect to have them removed because they can’t get used to the new/diminished propeceptive capabilities of the limbs.