The man who built an arm out of scrap metal

[oliver9523]

Afternoon folks,

I saw this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-35407431 'news' item pop up on the BBC and thought ooo that sounds interesting... then I saw it.
I've been watching Dave's youtube channel for a while but thought I needed to join the forum and share this.

I'm 100% behind people who can build things and just want to learn more and better themselves... but this?

Here are a few screenshots from the video. I thought this would be a good game to play spot the components.



So that's clearly an optical mouse board there with the green LED... and nope it's not being used as a position encoder, it's in the middle of the backpack



There's clearly another crusty board above the mouse with some I/O ports on top, I can't ID it though.

Here's a shot of the headband with what looks to be a camera module and an SD card reader hanging off the red PCB.



Then of course there's the massive electro-mechanical elephant in the room.... so.... he couldn't work with one hand, but builds this with one hand so he can go back to work as a "welder and also a repairman, fixing household electronics such as fans, televisions and refrigerators."

[Shock]

Wayan Sumardana and Ahmed Mohamed should team up and invent some lies together.

[macboy]

In the second photo is what looks like a digital camera module with SD card slot, and some wires running haphazardly in front of the camera lens. 

I am trying to imagine what was the original purpose of the green board next to it, the one with the four diagonally mounted LEDs. Some children's toy? Like a Simon?

[oliver9523]

Good shout with the game board.

To the top left of the mouse board there are 4 wires, yellow-black-black-red, this looks suspiciously like an old PC molex power connector.

[dexters_lab]

very cool construction!

...but am i being cynical in saying i dont think it's controlled by brainwaves?

[KL27x]

he couldn't work with one hand, but builds this with one hand so he can go back to work as a "welder and also a repairman, fixing household electronics such as fans, televisions and refrigerators."

LOLOLOL

[Brumby]

very cool construction!

...but am i being cynical in saying i dont think it's controlled by brainwaves?

But no ... it IS!

You just have to address the correct sequence of things...   The rotary electromechanical units are operating as generators, not motors.

[timb]

Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto, for helping me weld just when I needed to! Thank you! Thank you, thank youuuu! And thank you very much a Mr. Roboto for fixing the fans that nobody wants to! And thank you very much Mr. Roboto now my son can buy the snacks just when he wants to! Domo (domo), domo (domo).

Seriously though, I think something *did* happen to the guy and he couldn't use his arm, however there was nothing physically wrong, it was psychosomatic. Like phantom limbs, or cases where people believe they are paralyzed after traumatic events.

That's the only plausible scientific reason. In a sense it does work, for him.

That, or he's making the whole thing up and his arm really works fine.

[dexters_lab]

yea i think he has lost the use of his arm, but maybe he can still have limited movement in his hand or something... switches in the glove?

he should be applauded for what he has put together, i just find it strange why he claims it's brainwave activated

maybe it's just lost in the translation to subtitles?

[timb]

yea i think he has lost the use of his arm, but maybe he can still have limited movement in his hand or something... switches in the glove?

he should be applauded for what he has put together, i just find it strange why he claims it's brainwave activated

maybe it's just lost in the translation to subtitles?

In the video, you'll notice the bionic arm doesn't actually do anything. The motors never run under electric power and the pneumatic/hydraulic pistons aren't actually hooked up to pumps.

So, it would seem he's not only able to actually move his arm, but move it with several additional pounds of junk attached to it. So, he's either making it all up or its psychosomatic. Or there could be a valid medical explanation, such as temporary paralysis due to nerve compression that's now gone.

That's actually happened to me before. I fell asleep at my workbench in such a way that my hand was folded forward and my weight placed on it. When I woke up, my hand was completely paralyzed! I went to the doctor, but she wasn't in so I saw the nurse practitioner who told me it was just carpotunnel syndrome at which point I just stood up and left, driving straight to the hospital.

There I saw a neurosurgeon who figured out the nerves in my wrist had been compressed and set me up with a hand brace. It took a week before I could start to move my fingers again. It was very scary. I couldn't even login to my computer, because I had a long complicated password that had just become muscle memory.

Anyway, apparently the same thing can cause temporary paralysis below the elbow (if the nerves on the back of the elbow are compressed; think funny bone) or the entire arm (the nerves around your armpit). So, perhaps exhausted one day, this guy passed out in a weird position and woke up not being able to move his arm.

Or he's just a scammer. Who knows!

[han]

It's not electrical project. more likely art project since many of the component only function as decoration... 

[Brumby]

Saying it's psychosomatic is just being kind.  It's a fraud, IMHO.

Roboticists would kill for fluid motion like that!

My guess is he wants to see if he can get a youtube income - or perhaps sucker some donations.  Then again, maybe it was for a bet or he just wants some attention.  Who knows (aside from him).


Whatever the motivation, the tech is bogus.

It's not electrical project. more likely art project since many of the component only function as decoration... 

There's a thought .... maybe he's selling a variation of steam punk - bionics.

[free_electron]

Isn't that how everybody's arms work ? You think about what to do and your arm moves ?
So, nothing to see here, move on please ...

[Shock]

My guess is he wants to see if he can get a youtube income.  Then again, maybe it was for a bet.

Clearly you understand village life in a 3rd world country heh.

[Brumby]

Hardly.  Just speculating.



Nothing like a good speculation ... !

(or even a bad one  )

[Richard Crowley]

This is primarily an example of how even an impoverished "3rd world" random citizen can game the technically ignorant mainstream media.  It demonstrates the decreasing credibility of the popular press.

This invention purports to be able to measure brain or nerve signals without any decent skin electrodes. Something scientists with millions of dollars have yet to achieve.

It purports to detect very low-level physioelectric signals while being completely impervious to extraordinarily high EMF interference from arc-welding just inches away.

Perhaps this guy should go to Bollywood and work in the movie industry making props.

[mtdoc]

To be fair, it is very easy to pick up basic EEG potentials at the surface of the scalp with very crude surface electrodes and then with basic ADC and very little filtering differentiate between delta, alpha, beta, gamma, etc brain waves.  These different waves refelect general overall states of the brain ( sleep, awake and relaxed, awake and alert, etc). It's not hard to train oneself to induce alpha waves for example, so getting some binary action to occur based on alpha/no alpha would be trivially easy.

Sensory evoked potentials or motor event potentials gets more difficult but still not that hard to do with careful electrode placement, some processing power and appropriate code. Note, these are gross, surface potentials that reflect synchronous activity of many (likely millions) of neurons. They are not picking up activity of just a few neurons, so they only correspond to fairly gross sensory or motor brain activity.

Now, I'm not saying this guy is doing any of this (very likely not IMO) but it's not as far fetched as some here are suggesting.

[Richard Crowley]

Here is the real thing.  Note that they had to perform surgery to intercept nerves to make "connections" to. You can't do this with casual skin surface contacts.  And even if you could, you couldn't do arc-welding right next to it without some expectation of interference.   

[mtdoc]

Here is the real thing.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. I'Ve seen that before. But of course that is a few orders of magnitude different than what this guy is claiming. Finger movements, wrist flexion, pronation, supination and elbow flexion/extension, and shoulder abduction/adduction - with all those individually controlled and coordinated and bilateral!. Much, much different than the simple elbow flexion or relaxation ( passive extension) that this guy seems to be doing (and with a big, heavy pack).  Its kind of like comparing building a 555 timer blinky to getting full HD video out of an FPGA.

[ez24]

This reminds me of an article I read about 20 years ago in a local paper.  It was about an arm less man.  When he was about 8 years old he was at a circus in a small border town (Tecate, CA, and Tecate Mexico ).  This would have been in the 40s or 50s.   It surprised me because I have been to Tecate and it is hard to imagine a circus there.

But anyway he admitted that he was a "smart ass"   (I think normal) kid.  He decided to tease a caged lion and when he got close to the cage the lion reached out and grabbed his arm and pulled him.  When he got loose he bounced back to the cage and the lion got the other arm and he lost both arms.  Whew !!   

When I am in a low mood, I think of this and how lucky I passed through childhood without loosing any of my limbs.  (ps in my 20's I did loose the use of my knee on a motorcycle)

[mtdoc]

It just occured to me that what this guy may actually be doing is picking up EMG activity from scalp muscles and then using that to initiate elbow flexion of his mechanical arm. That would be pretty easy to do and he may even think he is picking up " brain waves" without realizing he is just picking up scalp muscle activity that is easily purposely initiated.

[Richard Crowley]

Yeah, maybe.  But even when researchers can implant sub-cutaneous electrodes, they still frequently conduct their experiments inside Faraday cages to prevent "normal" RFI from interfering with the signals.

Even if he WAS able to get scalp signals with simple surface electrodes, it is impossible for me to believe they would be impervious to an unshielded wideband arc of hundreds of watts.

[Theboel]

From what I know, yes he is Indonesian like me

1. He build the mechanical hand to help him to work in his workshop by himself
2. Yes he lying about his mechanical hand controlled by his brain (what ever thats mean)
3. He do not have any commercial interest in what ever term (the media come and go without paying or giving something and also he do not ask for anything even he do not ask any one to come to his home)
4. I proud with him that struggle to feed his family with his disability (his left hand get parallelized 6 month ago).

I know some where or some one in this forum has better mechanical skill than him but build mechanical hand with whatever You has in the back yard with less than 20usd budget not something take with a funny or sarcasm word.
Sorry fellow I write not because he is under same flag with me but I write because he is a father with kids like me who need feed his family.     

[mtdoc]

Yeah, maybe.  But even when researchers can implant sub-cutaneous electrodes, they still frequently conduct their experiments inside Faraday cages to prevent "normal" RFI from interfering with the signals.

What they are doing with their electrodes is completely different. They are using fine wire electrodes inplanted into brain tissue (not subcutaneous) to pick up activity from small clusters of cells in order to allow control of several precise movements in a coordinated way. Normal EEG signals picked up at the surface of the scalp require no shielding from such interference. I designed and built a whole system to do just that thing for a University teaching lab 25 years ago. We used simple scalp electrodes ( a small thin metal disc attached to a wire) held in place by an ordinary sports headband.

Even if he WAS able to get scalp signals with simple surface electrodes, it is impossible for me to believe they would be impervious to an unshielded wideband arc of hundreds of watts.

True enough. But again to be fair they did not show him doing any movement while welding did they?  - Just using the prepositioned arm to hold a piece in place.

[mtdoc]

1. He build the mechanical hand to help him to work in his workshop by himself
2. Yes he lying about his mechanical hand controlled by his brain (what ever thats mean)
3. He do not have any commercial interest in what ever term (the media come and go without paying or giving something and also he do not ask for anything even he do not ask any one to come to his home)
4. I proud with him that struggle to feed his family with his disability (his left hand get parallelized 6 month ago).

I know some where or some one in this forum has better mechanical skill than him but build mechanical hand with whatever You has in the back yard with less than 20usd budget not something take with a funny or sarcasm word.
Sorry fellow I write not because he is under same flag with me but I write because he is a father with kids like me who need feed his family.

Thanks for that insight. Yes, some here seem a bit too quick to judge ill intent.