A British woman, from Camden in North London, Sarah de Lagarde, has achieved the distinction of being the first individual to utilise a bionic arm powered by Artificial Intelligence technology that is capable of interpreting her neural signals.
According to DailyMail on Wednesday, Lagarde suffered a mishap in September 2022 while commuting from work, wherein she slipped and fell into the crevice between the train and the platform edge.
As the locomotive departed from the station, the individual’s right upper limb and lower limb sustained severe crushing injuries.
Subsequently, she was struck by another train on the Tube network, leading to additional physical harm. The individual was transported to a medical facility and subsequently transferred to a specialised unit, where surgical procedures were performed to amputate her arm and leg.
In a statement on her new acquisition, Lagarde stated that the prosthetic arm, which uses AI technology, includes software that will learn which moves she performs the most frequently, making them easier for her to complete over time, and that her brain will trigger her arm to move.
She said, “The socket will attach to my upper arm and it will have sensors which detect my muscle twitches and the software will convert those impulses into arm movements.
“I have seen videos where the hand is able to hold an egg with three fingers or pick up a coin from a table.”
When they heard that Covvi, a company based in Leeds, had created a bionic hand, Lagarde’s family decided to start a fundraising drive to help pay for it.
Researchers found that the majority of prosthetic limbs provided by the National Health Service were used primarily for cosmetic reasons.
