HEAVEN ON EARTH

Researchers at the Sydney Zoo deployed a robot dog to study how animals would behave in its presence.

If you have God, you have everything you need.

God Bless - KJ

This Baboon is helping his dog Friend to get rid of bugs. 

Limbitless Solutions is a non-profit organization and direct support organization for the University of Central Florida (UCF).

Founded in 2014 by then UCF students, the team is dedicated to empowering children in the limb difference community. Limbitless creates personalized, creative, and expressive 3D-printed bionic arms and believes that no family should be financially burdened because their child has a limb difference.

The character in the recently released Cyberpunk 2077 known as Johnny Silverhand himself (played by Keanu Reeves) sports a handsome prosthetic limb – something that is more or less commonplace in Night City. As such, Xbox and CD PROJEKT RED have partnered with Limbitless Solution in order to bring this prosthetic to life.

The Xbox official Youtube channel released a video detailing just a bit about the project and just what the prosthetics will be used for:

https://youtu.be/vz84NfUKfiA

The MCPDriver is designed for individuals with amputations through the proximal phalanx.

The MCPDriver restores the middle and distal phalanges. These body-driven, articulating devices allow patients to regain fine dexterity and natural grip patterns. It helps to restore pinch, key, cylindrical, and power grasps, as well as grip stability. Each device is custom-designed to within millimeters of a patient’s unique anatomy to successfully mimic the complex function of a finger.

The MCPDriver gets its strength from a combination of rigid stainless-steel linkages driven by the residuum and is comfortably anchored on the dorsal surface of the hand. The functional force at the fingertip is dependent on the patient’s input force. A typical male can achieve 7-9 lb force at each fingertip. Additionally, the power hook grasp posture allows patients to lift objects of substantial weight as the load transfers efficiently to the suspension about the wrist.

This techonology was developed by LaunchPad Medical, which received a worldwide license in 2015.

The properties of this biomaterial, known as Tetranite™, include the ability to provide immediate fixation of bone to bone and bone to metal. This adhesive has been shown in multiple animal studies to be a non-toxic and effective way of repairing bone fractures and defects as well as securing implant devices.

Existing data has also shown that Tetranite™ is reabsorbed and replaced with new bone during the natural process of bone remodeling by acting as a scaffold to facilitate bone growth over time. “I am truly excited about the opportunity we have to commercialize what will undoubtedly be a game-changing product in the field of bone health,” said Brian Hess, Chief Executive Officer of LaunchPad Medical.

LaunchPad will initially target the dental market where Tetranite™ will address complications associated with the placement of dental implants, which has become the standard of care for treating tooth loss.

 Nik Vlašič was born prematurely with severe brain damage. His father, Matej Vlašič, was told his child may never be able to sit up. Three years later, Nik was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. However, Vlašič decided to do everything he could to provide as high a quality of life as possible for his son and he started to think how he could help him. He came up with the idea of an ankle foot orthosis (AFO). So, Vlašič, who is an engineer with 12 years of experience, turned to 3D printing to create a much cheaper, more comfortable solution. By using a Formlabs Form 2 SLA printer, Vlašič created 13 prototypes of comfortable AFOs.

It took Vlašič half a year to perfect the AFO design but finally he was able to provide Nik with orthoses which were comfortable. The AFOs designed by Vlašič fit comfortably into Nik’s shoes and one pair costs less than $15. Traditionally made AFOs cost upwards of $5,000. By comparison, Vlašič’s 3D printer cost just $3,500 and Durable resin costs $175. Vlašič did a great job in helping his son to walk, dance and even hike. So, he decided to try and help others by starting his own company, aNImaKe, to provide more families in a similar situation as himself with the technology to help their children.

Rather than having to go through the discomfort of fittings, plaster casts and quickly outgrowing expensive AFOs, it’s possible to 3D print comfortable designs. Nik, now seven-years-old, is already on his fourth pair of AFOs.

Vlašič has also been working with Gaurav Manchanda, the director of healthcare at Formlabs, whose three-year-old son was also born prematurely and diagnosed with cerebral palsy.

 MIT team develops steerable soft thread-like robot capable of navigating tiny blood vessels

Snake robots are among the most familiar type of mechanical device for working in confined spaces. Flexible, tubular robots have been used for applications such as working in the interior of nuclear reactors, water distribution systems and inside the human body to aid surgery. The MIT team, mechanical engineers affiliated to the institution’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, have downsized the snake paradigm to the scale of a thread half a millimetre in diameter, which can be remotely controlled by magnetic fields to worm its way through the convoluted blood vessels of the brain to deliver clot-busting drugs or devices to break up and remove the blockage. Such robots have the potential to quickly treat a stroke and prevent damage to the brain, the team claims.

The process of making a physical object from a 3-dimension digital model is nothing new. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from MIT and elsewhere have developed a new way to print 3D objects that can control living organism in predictable ways. It is the combination of digital fabrication and genetic engineering. “When we 3d print we utilize a multi material 3d printer. One thing that we are doing differently is beginning to integrate chemical signals into the resin that we use. This chemical signals allow the 3D printed part to communicate to the cells that live on the surface of the 3D printer. In this way the 3D print has a pre-programmed control over the genes that are expressed on the surface of the printer.”

These chemicals can act as signals to activate certain responses in biologically engineered microbes, which are spray-coated onto the printer object. Once added, the microbes display specific colours of fluorescence in response to the chemical signals. This colours demonstrate the successful incorporation of the living cells on the surface of the 3D printed material.

The researchers call this new class of material hybrid living materials (HLMs). The objective is to make a robust design tool for producing objects and devices incorporating living biological elements, making it predictable and scalable as other industrial processes.

The printing platform the team used allows the material properties of the printed object to be varied precisely and continuously between different parts of the structure, with some sections stiffer and other more flexible. Some are more absorbent and others liquid-repellent.

Such variations could be used in the design of biomedical devices.