DARPA

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is part of the Federal Government that falls under the Department of Defense. The DARPA prosthetics program is an ambitious effort to provide the most advanced medical and rehabilitative technologies for military personnel injured in the line of duty. DARPA is currently working on two different upper extremity prosethetic devices. Their research team has recently developed a prosthetic arm that is undergoing trials with the Department of Veterans Affairs. (See CBS 60 Minutes coverage at www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5318065n.




The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory is working with DARPA, developing a different arm, which will be the first fully integrated prosthetic arm that can be controlled naturally, provide sensory feedback and allow for eight degrees of freedom - a level of control far beyond the current state of the art for prosthetic. (Each degree of freedom represents an independent field of motion such as up/down, left/right, forward/back, etc.)

A spokesman for DARPA indicated that while there are many details left to coordinate, "participants in the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program along with several others throughout the prosthetics community appear to be working toward a major event early next year to detail successes in prosthetics across the board, as well major advancements in prosthetic arms resulting from clinical and home trials from a DARPA/Veterans Affairs collaborative effort."

This is certainly a situation where the lines blur between science and medicine to the advantage of everyone.

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