Another cool device, which is not an arm and is for input rather than control, is one that lets people see through their tongues.[1]
It's currently targeted at the blind, but I'd imagine seeing people could use it just as well if it picked up, say, infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, radio waves, ionizing radiation or virtually anything else normally undetectable to human senses.
The potential of human sensory enhancement is truly staggering.
If it was cheap and easy enough, I'd seriously try it as a sighted person, to read while resting my eyes, which routinely get strained by the end of the day. Possibly decoupled from the camera and getting the signal from an adapter which itself gets text.
"Ready to buy or try a BrainPort Vision Pro? Fill out the patient survey here to determine if you are a good candidate. A Certified Trainer will contact you to discuss the next steps!"
Oh, never mind... I got from the quoted text that it would probably be prohibitively expensive, and that if I tried to find out more I'd probably divert professionals from helping actual blind people in need of this tech .
I wonder how hard it'd be to engineer something similar for a lot less money, though.
It just looks like a tiny camera mounted in regular sunglasses and connected to a computer which then translates the pixels from the camera to electric impulses on a grid of electrodes on a "lollipop" paddle that goes in to the mouth.
The camera, computer, and software translating the signals seems like the easy part. The only tricky part would be the electrodes, as those would have to be spaced pretty closely and create enough of a signal to be felt while not interfering with each other and at the same time being safe to put in to the mouth and not be affected by the saliva in the mouth, not taste bad, resist being accidentally bitten on, and probably some other engineering challenges I can't think of right now off the top of my head.
It's currently targeted at the blind, but I'd imagine seeing people could use it just as well if it picked up, say, infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, radio waves, ionizing radiation or virtually anything else normally undetectable to human senses.
The potential of human sensory enhancement is truly staggering.
[1] - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/seeing-with-yo...