i remember talking to a former colleague who wrote a game to let people train to control their prosthetic arm at home. I asked him what the most wished for feature / most asked question for this prosthetic arm was and he told me that the most asked for question was if (mostly female) users could put nail polish on its "nails".
Anecdata, but I assume most users just want to have a life-like replacement.
If I have an artificial limb, I'd like to have more storage space. Human bodies try to keep crevices to a minimum since they are points of attack by pathogens and parasites. An artificial limb doesn't have to survive to see my grandkids.
There's also no reason a prosthetic limb has to constrain itself to human standard dimensions. Oh I'm sure for propriety and interpersonal dynamics they need a default mode that looks quite similar, but an arm could telescope to give you a few extra inches of reach.
And I've already seen science fiction where a prosthetic hand has nine, ten fingers instead of 5, to facilitate human computer interaction. Though one does wonder, if the brain is capable of controlling a machine hand with higher numbers of digits, can we not skip over the two middle steps in brain-computer-input-computer translation and simply imagine you're typing on a 150 key keyboard that isn't really there? Or at least switch to a virtual hand that the computer uses to intercept the motor commands to the physical hand.
> can we not skip over the two middle steps in brain-computer-input-computer translation
Well, if we're talking Ghost in the Shell (the most iconic case of robot-hand super-typing I can think of), having that disconnect is entirely on purpose, to airgap the operators' brains (enhanced, but self-contained) from any external connections.
Interestingly the one amputee I know well enough to speak about this with is quite aggrieved by prosthetic design decisions being made based on what someone assumes amputees need or want. The final fitting and tuning is very custom but the functional tradeoffs of the device are decided well before that, seemingly without much collaboration with the people who will ultimately use them.
hinkley|2 years ago
If I have an artificial limb, I'd like to have more storage space. Human bodies try to keep crevices to a minimum since they are points of attack by pathogens and parasites. An artificial limb doesn't have to survive to see my grandkids.
There's also no reason a prosthetic limb has to constrain itself to human standard dimensions. Oh I'm sure for propriety and interpersonal dynamics they need a default mode that looks quite similar, but an arm could telescope to give you a few extra inches of reach.
And I've already seen science fiction where a prosthetic hand has nine, ten fingers instead of 5, to facilitate human computer interaction. Though one does wonder, if the brain is capable of controlling a machine hand with higher numbers of digits, can we not skip over the two middle steps in brain-computer-input-computer translation and simply imagine you're typing on a 150 key keyboard that isn't really there? Or at least switch to a virtual hand that the computer uses to intercept the motor commands to the physical hand.
crooked-v|2 years ago
Well, if we're talking Ghost in the Shell (the most iconic case of robot-hand super-typing I can think of), having that disconnect is entirely on purpose, to airgap the operators' brains (enhanced, but self-contained) from any external connections.
LtWorf|2 years ago
giraffe_lady|2 years ago
mkoubaa|2 years ago
DonHopkins|2 years ago