Gearfuse

35-year old blogger Tanya Vlach lost one of her eyes in a car accident three years ago. Now she wants to make the best of it by replacing her prosthetic acrylic eye with an ‘eye cam’ – a webcam for her eye socket. She wants one capable of dilating with changes of light that also allows her to blink to control its zoom, focus and an on/off switch for when she sees something too obscene to record.

“There have been all sorts of cyborgs in science fiction for a long time, and I’m sort of a sci-fi geek,” said Vlach. “With the advancement of technology, I thought, ‘Why not?’”

With an eye like that she could blog her daily events and life story through her own eye’s perspective. I hope she leaves it on while in the shower. That’s a webcam blog I’d like to see!

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The Luke Arm is the world’s first real, fully-functional prosthetic arm. The video shows Dean Kamen and the progress his team has made with the prosthesis as they work with the arm in either a remote-controlled or thought-controlled method. The Luke Arm’s silicone-rubber inner-side straps work with the arm and distribute pressure at certain areas of the body during use. Made up of magnesium, titanium and a slew of other metals, the Luke arm weighs a mere 8.9-pounds and is said to be able to crush any man in arm wrestling. I’m serious, check the video out.

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Bodyhack’s Randy Dotinga was an attendant of the AAAS conference, one of the largest scientific conferences in the world, and discusses his experience sitting on the panel of the neural implants and prosthetics. The conversation quickly changed to the evolution of brain science. One matter discussed was the ability of a prosthetic to not only just be an artificial limb on the end of a stump, but a intelligent part of the patients body and image. The ability to implant sensors and chips in the brain is allowing scientists the opportunity to discuss such technology’s with increased seriousness.

While we might not yet be at the point of the sort of prosthetic Luke Skywalker gets for his hand in Star Wars after battling Vader, which is more robotic then anything else, the thought of smart prosthetics brings us one step closer to the thought of cyborg intelligence, cyberkinetics, and possibly much easier lives for those who need prosthetics. — Andrew Dobrow

Your brain connected to your…fake arm [Bodyhack]