Thread: What is the biggest challenge to creating robotic limbs?

Ive read they can make mechanical eyes now or even grow new ones, and though they cant see color they can distinguish shapes and thus effectivly giving them vision.

Also ive seen that they can directly signal the brain to move a persons arm AND that they can connect people to a machine and move it with mere thought.

So what really is the major obstacles for creating robotic limbs? Is this still mere "Science fiction" or possible today?

I can imagine grafting it onto the skeleton without infections and connecting the arm to the brain as the major problems, but is there anything else here im missing when it comes to the difficulty of such a task?

Originally Posted by Raziell

I can imagine grafting it onto the skeleton without infections and connecting the arm to the brain as the major problems, but is there anything else here im missing when it comes to the difficulty of such a task?

For that part I wonder how you'd breach the skin without causing irritation. It's not uncommon to put reinforcing metal bars or plates in a person's bones even now, so I don't see a problem with connecting to the bones themselves.

Would it be like those holes that they surgically put in the throats of chronic smokers sometimes? Would that kind of a strategy work?