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Comment by bitxbitxbitcoin | Hacker News Reader

"In a pioneering surgery, titanium implants were placed in the two forearm bones (radius and ulnar), from which electrodes to nerves and muscle were extended to extract signals to control a robotic hand and to provide tactile sensations."

This seems pretty significant. And, I hate to sound gross but doesn't that technically mean a prosthesis could be attached as an extra instead of a replacement?

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This is one of the areas I think is fascinating about prosthesis - once we get to the point where they're essentially connected in to the brain, and can be used as though they were a natural limb, what would happen if say, you raised a child with the ability to control four arms as naturally as two? Or raised them with non-humanoid limbs?

Another really cool application would be the ability to control extremities that aren't part of your body. Using the internet, you could deliver whole-body experiences to robotic shells thousands of km away from your actual body or in virtual environments. The indian concept of avatars, also part of christian religion, would become scientific reality.

There's a startup, I believe it's in Japan, that is working on this. Basically you'd have generic looking prosthetic humans at popular tourist locations, and you could pay to rent them for a set amount of time, remotely controlling them with sensors attached to your body, and seeing through their eyes with a VR helmet.

The pen & paper RPG eclipse phase is going one step further there. Singularity AI's are ... well replicating and harvesting on earth with little consequence for the biological implications. As such, humans are uploading their minds to escape shuttles, since you can fit a million people on a storage raid the size of a person. And then there's corporations providing cheap robotic bodies... It's an amazingly disgusting yet realistic setting.

I personally think that prosthetics and mechanical augmentation will become commonplace in the future. Humans are smart enough to create tools that allow us to surive where we normally couldn't, I don't see why we wouldn't eventaully get to a point where we decide that we can create better bodies for ourselves, instead of waiting for evolution to eventually work its magic.

I was once involved in a DARPA study that looked at this.

My takeaway: we have no idea whether the neurocontrol parts of the brain are this plastic. It might work great; it might totally fail. Nobody knows yet.

How many extra arms did they give you? Did you get to keep them?

Yes, two. They’re in my lab;)

Where do you attach a third arm?

Probably on your back, and have it lay flat when not in use. That way you could carry things in front of you, and use the third arm to carry additional stuff as a counterbalance.

The problem is integrating it into the existing skeleton. Our arms are not just glued to the body, they integrate with the shoulder.

And never ever be able to seat on a standard chair or travel in a car? Probably not.

I would think about how to carry on common tasks with common items such as seating, sleeping, wearing clothes, etc. Perhaps 4 arms would be better than 3 given our symmetry but they're going to force the owner to use so many specially built stuff. I guess two are going to be optimal for a while.

Or attach the extra arms to a hexoscheleton and wear it only when needed.

How about wirelessly controlled?

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