Luke: as in Luke Skywalker

In 2005 the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) assigned Dean Kamen, to develop a robotic limb for soldiers that have lost one or both their arms. As Kamen said, "You're nuts! the technology for that kind of stuff is not available". Then at his DEKA Research labs, Kamen and his team developed what they called the “Luke Arm” within 18 months.


The 8.9-pound robotic arm can be easilly interfaced by nerves, muscles, and foot pedals. YES the Luke Arm can be controlled by mere thoughts. A new user can comfortably control the artificial limb after only 10 hours of practice. The arm also sends haptic (touch) feedback to the user via vibration motors. The higher the frequency of the vibration, the greater the response from the haptic sensors in Luke's fingertips.

The main concern of the developing team, is to give the user all 21 degrees of freedom (whatever that means, moving arround like a normal arm), the dexterity needed for someone to feed himself with this arm, and the haptic feedback, not to destroy what the arm is grasping. Essensially the user should be able to take a grape from a table, without crushing it, and put it in his mouth with ease.