Researchers have shown that a combination of special surgery and a bionic limb can increase the walking speed of some amputees by 40 percent, within the range of able-bodied individuals.
This MIT engineer built his own bionic leg
MIT professor Hugh Herr — himself an amputee — worked with colleagues to develop a technique to build a neuroprosthetic interface during or after amputation to control prostheses and provide feedback from the bionic prosthesis to the brain.
"We are at a point in history where the convergence of surgical and regenerative technologies with new electromechanical interfaces will lead to step-by-step functionality in clinical care for so many patients around the world," Herr told reporters before his team's paper was published in the journal Nature Medicine Today.
The technology is based on a surgical neuroprosthetic interface combined with a biomechanical prosthetic limb.
