Any Marvel comic / Spider-man series fan will be familiar to Dr.Octopus, the scientist turned villain with multiple arms. People witnessed what a person can do with multiple arms, in both movies and comics. Despite the evilness, Dr.Octopus created a dream. A dream where there is no constraint because of just two arms.
MIT researchers have been developing such robotic limbs named as Supernumerary Robotic Limbs(SRL).
These limbs are not designed to act as a replacement for natural arms, but to act as additional ones for carrying out various tasks that cannot be done with two arms.
The current prototype of SRL will not act as independent arm but as a shadow arm. The current design is something like this - You will wear the arms in such a way that the controller reside over your shoulders. The robotic limbs replicate whatever you do with your arms based on shoulder stimuli.
This current prototype is functioning perfectly and demonstrated successfully by MIT researchers. They also mentioned that they are trying to find a way to make these arms work independently.
Its a great news and wonderful invention with wide range of usage. As long as they don't plan to pierce the body to integrate this arms, I will await for this technology eagerly.
