The chip on your shoulder

From the tiny wind-swept Canadian province of Nova Scotia — exactly halfway between the Equator and the North Pole — comes the story of Amy Paradis. Late last month, Paradis hit world headlines for walking for the first time since a 2009 car accident that had crushed her spine and wiped out the use of her two legs.

Images of Paradis’ 336 ‘first steps’ were splashed across front pages and the world was simply stunned by what they were seeing. The 21-year-old was indeed walking and moving about, getting to point A from point B. But it wasn’t traditional movement — a machine was helping her. More precisely, the young Canadian was being ‘aided’ by a $100,000 piece of tech, one of only 75 currently in use. A fully capable exoskeleton.

And because Paradis had achieved rare levels of human-machine integration, the world also began calling her, ‘The Bionic Woman’. A host of sensors and a main computer were propelling her around and a ‘walk’ generally lasted for three hours, per battery charge. The tiny community of Windsor was definitely amazed.  

Afghanistan & invisible soldiers

For years, exoskeletons and augmented limbs have been just figments of very drunken imagination. You might remember Robocop, half-man, half-tank cleaning up the streets in crime-addled dystopia. Then there was 2009’s Deus Ex, a cyberpunk-themed video game that had you playing protagonist JC Denton. Bristling with nanotech and augmented abilities, Denton could punch through walls, disable complex electronics and could even land safely after a 30-foot high jump off an enemy balcony. Fat gamers just couldn’t stop talking about Denton and what if, he did exist in real life.

Fast forward to 2014, towards the front-lines of America’s war on terror in Afghanistan. The US Army and its trillion-dollar defence budget are currently experimenting with augmented combat suits and like everything else from their military shed, these suits too come with a pop-culture heavy acronym — HULC, short for Human Universal Load Carrier exoskeleton. The suit will allow special forces units to turn into ‘pack mules’ lumbering around weights of up to 90 kilos per individual, (more bullets, more water) across long distances and testing is currently on on the Afghan battlefield, much to the surprise of the Taliban who no longer seem to know what they’re firing at.

The US Army hopes, that under its ‘Future Soldier’ programme, much of what they leave behind in the Aghanistan theatre following a complete troop withdrawal, is either pure machine or a powerful part-human invention with the deadliest of new capabilities. The future of warfare then, is ironically being shaped in the most primitive of countries. The soldier of the future will see in the dark, will instantly connect to a network of fellow soldiers, will punch through walls, carry drones on his back and if the rumours are true, will be invisible to the naked eye.

Off to the brain-machine Olympics

Fortunately for the world at large though, not all of cybernetic tech is being spent on mixing democracy and poppy. There are good doctors and researchers who are currently on ‘the edge of tomorrow’ with innovation that could one day benefit millions who have lost use of their limbs or fingers. We’re not talking just prosthetics here… we’re talking moving digits… the ability to clutch a towel, hold a baby, crack open an egg… whip up breakfast.

Which is why we’re now off to beautiful Zurich, to talk to Professor Robert Reiner about the reasons behind starting one of the world’s most unusual sporting events — 2016’s Cybathlon.

“The event is the first ever ‘Olympics’ for people with assistive technologies and a championship of robot-assisted parathletes,” explains Professor Reiner, from the Sensory-Motor Systems Lab, Zurich and an organiser behind Cybathlon.

In simpler terms, the Cybathlon will for the first time bring to a sporting arena individuals who are paralysed from neck down, whose only shot at competitive motion is through a brain-machine interface, in which they are linked to an avatar on a monitor. They will be moving these avatars through well, just thought. The event will also feature Powered wheelchair races, a Powered leg prostheses race and even a Powered arm prostheses race, in which contestants will have to “successfully complete a two-hand task as quickly as possible”.

“These events may sound strange. But there’s a huge disconnect between technology and patients,” Prof Reiner tells DC. “In my lab, there are nearly 35 people working towards the Cybathlon… to simply show the world these options to a missing limb exist. That you no longer have to limit daily life to a lonesome window in the bedroom.”

He continues: “In countries like the US, Britain and Australia, there’s much innovation in assisted limb technologies. Of course, there are problems. For example, power conservation and wearable weight are two major troubles we are facing currently. We also need to discover new materials that will be feasible for a patient to wear and live with. With the Cybathlon, we are hoping to push the latest in assistive technologies into the mainstream. It will help countries especially like India know that there exists tech that can actually move you again, without failing.”

The thumb and the egg

But one of the most important hurdles crossed has been the invention of the movable thumb. A leap in artificial limb tech, which will now take us to the UK. British firm Touch Bionics is responsible for the iLimb… a hand that can even be ‘monitored’ by an app on your smartphone and yes, you can crack open an egg with this one.

The firm’s spokesperson Danny Sullivan explains. “Some years ago, if you had lost your digits, replacement would mean a wooden prothetic with no actual daily use. You would not have been able to hold anything, forget making breakfast. Our technology will now allow you to even control the very dexterity which you apply on an object. Each finger will even bend at natural joints so that you can accurately grasp a shaped object.”

The pure application potential is immense. A teacher can go back to writing on the blackboard. A motoring enthusiast can drive again and a mother can carry her shopping home and deftly hold the baby. Your arm, and fingers will be working again. It’s the perfect man-machine ‘handshake’.  Which is what India needs, so badly.
A leg up please?

Dr Nagesh C. from Hyderabad’s NIMS hospital fills in about the technology gap that currently exists between what a lab in Switzerland is doing and what’s on offer in India, if you lose an arm or a leg to a drunk driver.

“I’m afraid there’s not much innovation in prosthetics here. The Jaipur leg has been around for nearly 30 years and that’s pretty much it. Maharashtra has been doing some work, but that’s all. Prosthetics and research into efficient replacement have been woefully inadequate and that means advanced limbs can cost anywhere between Rs 3 to 6 lakh and most patients prefer treatment and therapy abroad. So, yes… you are asking me about technology that will still fall under ‘fantastic’ for us.”

And nobody talks “hope and fantastic” as much as paracyclist Aditya Mehta, who rode his bicycle across 3,800 kilometres, from Srinagar to Kanyakumari, on a leg assembled using parts from the US, UK and Germany. “After my accident, I was devastated. The feeling of silicon units attached to your stump is mighty unpleasant. In the summer, it’s all rashes and a bowl of sweat,” reveals the 31-year-old sport from Hyderabad.

“The early days were incredibly tough. I couldn’t take the leg into washrooms. I would fall in toilets. Be generally helpless in bad weather and had to rely on friends. But then I decided to continue… whatever it is that I enjoyed doing before the crash. I took up cycling, assembled myself a leg — wasn’t very perfect early on because the German parts came off, passed through my front tyre and sent me flying 10 feet — but the effort was worth every drop of blood shed on that road. Now, I plan to buy myself some para-gliding blades and that’s what is next for me — para-gliding. I’m not going to stop and I plan to feel every thrill this life has on offer.”

Mehta might in his lifetime. According to Prof Reiner, full cybernetic integration is perhaps just a decade away… it’s around the corner. So, the world may finally have a limb, which can feel, respond and hold. A limb which will include hundreds of intricate parts and bleeding edge technologies that’ll come together to replicate a simple human gesture… maybe even a hug or a fist-bump.

Because we are somehow moving towards a reality in which the human body will need better batteries. The future is here.