ABSTRACT
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Since the experiments of Luigi Galvani two centuries ago, it has been known that electrical currents can be used to stimulate muscle contraction. Achieving functionally useful movements of a multiarticular limb has been more elusive. It is only within the past 30 years that robotics engineers and neurophysiologists have fully recognized and started to address the demands that such movements place on sensors,
actuators, and control systems. It now appears feasible to graft robotic and electrophysiological instrumentation onto a biological system to repair it, but this will require many channels of information transmission in each direction. These channels must be installed and function safely and reliably in one of the most challenging environments conceivable — the human body.
