Sometimes it would be really nice to have another hand and soon that could be a very real possibility. It’s all part of a new extra limb testing program being used by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and it’s pretty wild.
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00:00 Sometimes it would be really nice to have another hand, and soon that could be a very
00:07 real possibility.
00:08 This is part of a new extra limb testing program being used by researchers at the Swiss Federal
00:13 Institute of Technology.
00:14 It started as a proof of concept, allowing users to don a VR headset and experience doing
00:19 different tasks with a third arm, one controlled via the eyes and breathing.
00:23 And they have found that not only can users warm up to a fifth appendage, but they can
00:27 do so fairly effortlessly after a bit of practice.
00:30 This is one of the researchers, Julia Domenagiani, to explain.
00:34 Eventually we were able to implement the interface that we developed for the control of a real
00:38 robotic arm, and what was extremely interesting to see was that both trained participants
00:45 and naive participants performed similarly, again showing the intuitiveness of our control
00:52 interface.
00:53 They also conducted other experiments where participants controlled a computer mouse with
00:57 muscles behind the ears, ones left unused by evolution.
01:00 They say this could be a new way to empower those who can no longer use their limbs due
01:04 to illness or injuries.
01:05 But they're not stopping there.
01:07 They also believe this tech will be useful to everyone, giving individuals extraordinary
01:11 abilities, by literally giving them a hand.
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