Here’s a quote from The Telegraph:

A woman fitted with the world’s first “bionic arm” controlled by thought alone has been given back a sense of feeling.

Claudia Mitchell, 26, a former US marine, regained the ability to carry out simple tasks such as cutting up food when she was fitted with the prosthetic arm last year.

Now doctors have re-routed the ends of arm nerves to a patch of skin on her chest — allowing her to regain the sensation of having her lost hand touched.

A new study of her wrist, hand and elbow function found she could use the artificial limb intuitively and could perform tasks four times quicker than with a conventional prosthesis.

Ms Mitchell, who had her left arm amputated after a motorcycle accident, told doctors: “I just think about moving my hand and elbow, and they move. I think, ‘I want my hand open’ and it happens. My original prosthesis wasn’t worth wearing — this one is.”

In a commentary published in The Lancet medical journal, Dr Leigh Hochberg, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said early results for the new operating system for the limb were “an important step forward in the seamless integration of replacement limbs into the body”.

Dr Hochberg said the next stage would be for touch sensors on the artificial hand transmitting signals back to the re-routed nerves, allowing patients to have accurate sensations of touch, temperature and joint position.

How awesome is this?

The thing you have to keep in mind is that these are the first baby steps toward the wholesale replacement of missing or malfunctioning limbs with integrated, brain controlled, robotic devices. Chris may not have to wait much longer for his full robot body replacement unit.

Hit the link for the Full Story