Great Inventions | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

There are 7 billion people on the planet and almost 5 billion cell phones, meaning the majority of the Earth's population is connected for sound and images. Only God knows what else the cell phone has brought us. An endless world of chatting, tweeting, texting, even sexting. You don't know what that is, ask any high school kid, it's all the result of Marty Cooper's big idea and he looks at it all with pride, amusement and some dismay and no wonder he's the father of the cell phone that built the first. 37 years ago marked the beginning of a technological and social revolution that, according to him, is far from over.

He made the first public call with a cell phone on the sidewalks of New York in 1973. This is a time when there were no cordless phones and there certainly were no cell phones and Here's this guy talking while walking and I went out into the street and I almost got crushed by a New York taxi, so, talk about being pre and seeing a picture of the future, it's a future of uninterrupted connection of applications galore, iPhones. and droids, blackberries and blue teeth or it's Bluetooth, so you really like this, huh. Marty Cooper reviews the latest at the Wireless Industries annual convention in Las Vegas.

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convergence where geeks meet gadgets. How do I delete? I know how to add a and unlike some of us of a certain age, he understands it all. Do you tweet on Twitter? I signed up for Twitter about 6 months ago, did nothing and had 17 followers so now I'm tweeting. My latest Twitter is The secret to aging success

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y is having good jeans and showing a lot of respect for them. You think you're the oldest Twitter in America. I don't want to be the oldest in America. I'm sorry, but you'll have to do it. Look hard to find someone older on the slopes of Veil, their favorite getaway.

Marty Cooper was born in Chicago on the eve of the Great Depression. He is 81 years old, an age for many when the most strenuous exercise of the day is getting in and out of bed. You have it from him. and his skiing is better than ever. I have a hard time keeping up with them and I'm almost 20 years younger with his wife Arlene, another veteran of the mobile phone business. Marty Cooper is still in the game waiting for the next big thing in wireless communication he is convinced that the cell phone at 37 years old is still in its infancy the technology has to be invisible transparent simply simple a modern cell phone in general has a book of instructions it's bigger and heavier than your cell phone that's not cool call it complexity or confusion factor you can use this device to connect up to five different computers or Wi-Fi enabled devices at the same time really cool it's the future welcome to the 21st century Cooper argues that cell phones are designed to do everything, taking pictures, playing music and videos, browsing the web, and doing none of them very well.

He believes buyers should dictate exactly what they want. The consumer is the king. The consumer should make the decisions and certainly not the engineer, because engineers try to dazzle other engineers instead. Engineers tend to be enchanted by the technology itself. Do you know what a Jitter phone is? No, I don't, so it seems natural that the latest device developed by Cooper for his wife is a retro cell phone called the Jitterbug, a feature phone. no camera no music any idiot can operate it try it what do you hear dial tone? Yes, if there is a dial tone you can call.

If there is no dial tone you can do it. Why did you drag me up here on the roof? His next target lets go. Lost calls. On top of his office building, ugly conventional cell phone antennas are disguised as flag poles covering the entire area they cover. He is developing so-called smart antennas that can eliminate all the competitive noise in the radio environment to transmit your call and what we do is when we transmit we send the information only to your phone. I mean, we will come to the day when every cell phone will be perfect or as perfect as a deadbolt.

That's exactly what Marty Cooper has accomplished. Let us go for a moment. Back. to the Future New York calling all cars for a preview of Tomorrow the sales precursor the car phone arrived just after World War II a small radio transmitter sends your voice over the airwaves to the nearest Central Station where the regular telephone operators can connect you any land phone in the north a world of wonders if someone was sick you could reach the doctor on the road well put him in bed and i will be there in 10

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remember those were the quaint old days when doctors, at least on the news, made house calls EMP Elmer is shopping for his wife at home, even then it was clear that being connected would put everyone under control George, I forgot to tell you, now bring me two dozen oranges, two loaves of bread, 20 pounds of potatoes, and when you're in In the 1960s, AT&T developed more sophisticated cellular antennas.

The phone giant still considered car phones to be the name of the game, but Marty Cooper and his engineers at Motorola thought differently and decided to make their way into the business. We really had a basic understanding that people are mobile and what they want are personal, portable phones, so there was a real conflict between this elephant that was AT&T and this fly that was Motorola, but we ended up winning on a cold spring day. We took Cooper back to the place where he made that first call. Avenue outside the New York Hilton for the record that the call was to Joel Angle Cooper's rival at AT&T I said Joel, this is Bary Cooper, he says Hello, I'm calling you from a cell phone, but a real cell phone, a portable cell phone.

There was silence at the end of the line, you couldn't resist rubbing it, oh no doubt, wait for a dial tone which I hope you can hear. There it is too, at a press conference inside the Hilton Cooper presented his Gadget. and he encouraged journalists to try it. The first journalist I spoke to called his mother in Australia and was surprised by what her mother responded. He couldn't understand how this little phone could talk to the other side of the Earth, which, of course, it did little. Are you talking about a small phone? Well, relatively small.

I, after all, only weigh 2 and A2 pounds and now I hang it and all I can say is what I will think next. Still a good question: where is the cell phone? technology on the move I think we're just scratching the surface take on the topic of health and fitness a fitness fanatic if there ever was one Cooper says the day is fast approaching when your phone or something will check your signs vital day and night The healthcare industry is going to be revolutionized because you will have sensors at various points on your body measuring different things and a computer somewhere or maybe a doctor will be examining you all the time and the whole concept demonstration is there. designed for the diabetic audience, it is not.

That crazy health check was a big topic at the recent wireless convention in Las Vegas. The concept of the annual physical is almost useless because looking at your body at one time doesn't tell doctors much, but if you could measure these things all the time you can predict heart failure you can predict diabetes and you can prevent all of these things from the start. hideaway overlooking the Pacific in Southern California Cooper envisions a society with touchstones as familiar as money and credit cards Simple human contacts are things of the past replaced by wireless devices that will rule Our Lives, isn't there almost a feeling of Brave New World behind all this being connected?

What effect does it have on our privacy? Sorry, privacy is a thing of the past, he has a point about security. cameras track our movements cell phones contain clues about what we have read where we have been and where we are the police track Suspects on Facebook and police states can no longer suppress snapshots of their repression I think the whole concept of privacy requires a The new mentality among people is that there are people who are opposed to anyone monitoring their purchasing habits. I would love for people to know what I buy because they will adapt their marketing to me and the products that are available to my taste.

The good thing is that hiding yes and no, I mean, hiding something is a kind of undeniable human right, you know, having some sense of private life, the next Gizmo might start reading our thoughts and whoever can't read our thoughts . Minds for a few generations, if they are ever working on it, although yes, they are the reason it was so big. We had to put so much into it. Cooper is upset, like all of us, about his cell phone getting in the way while we were out. We were discussing the history of the device, we would never have regretted it.

I just got a notification from my I thought you thought you had a pair or a Budgy here. My Droid came with me and says Droid every time I get an email. so I corrected him, now it's going to be and he is philosophical on the subject of bad telephone manners, that world curse of other people's chatter. Sound and fury that mean nothing, you know, it doesn't take a phone to make people stupid or rude. It's going to be both, get used to it and don't take it out with the phone when I throw this against the wall.

They're making them shockproof and waterproof anyway, let's say if you spilled something on it. and furthermore, as the future looms over us, Marty Cooper says that eventually man and machine will become one, the optimal phone is one that I believe will one day be embedded behind your ear, will have an extraordinarily powerful computer running the cell phone and I'm going to call my computer Sam and I'm going to say Sam, bring me Mor Leop's phone and Sam is going to answer in my ear: Which Morley is your cousin Morley in Toronto or Morley Safer in New York?

York and I'm going to say Morley Safer and the next thing I'm going to do is talk to you back in the 1980s, a Misfits lab foresaw our future touch screens automated driving instructions wearable technology and electronics Inc. were all developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a place they call a media lab, it's a research lab and graduate program that long ago outgrew its name. Today he is creating Technologies to grow food in the desert, control our dreams and connect the human brain to the Internet. Come take a look. in what we find in a place that could be called the future Factory to Arnav Kapor a graduate student in the media laboratory the future is silent has developed a system to navigate the Internet with his mind what happens is when you are reading or When When you are talking to yourself, your brain transmits electrical signals to your vocal cords.

You can actually pick up on these signals and you can get certain clues about what the person intends to speak, so the brain sends an electrical signal for a word that you normally speak MH but your device is intercepting that signal, so instead of say the word, your device is sending it to a computer, that's right, that's amazing, let's see how it works, so we try it on what is 4,689 id 6 7, sure you ask silently. computer and then listens to the answer through vibrations transmitted through your skull to your inner ear 6 8 1.9 2 5 exactly correct one more what is the largest city in Bulgaria and what is the population the screen shows how long it takes to the computer read the words you are saying to yourself Sophia 1.1 million that's right, you just googled that I did, you could be an expert on any topic, you have the entire internet in your head, that's the idea, Ideas are the currency of the MIT media lab, the lab is a six-story Tower of Babel, where 230 graduate students speak dialects of art, engineering, biology, physics and coding, all translated into innovation, the media lab It's this glorious mix, this Renaissance, where we break down these formal disciplines, mix it all up, and see what emerges. the magic of that intellectual diversity, she was like Hur is a professor who runs an Advanced Prosthetics laboratory and what you get from that is this incredible ease when you stand like a toy designer next to a person who is thinking about how You will see the instruments in the future next to someone like me who is connecting machines with the nervous system it becomes really strange.

Technologies, you get things that no one could have conceived. The media lab was conceived in a 1984 proposal. Nicholas Negron of MIT wrote that computers are media that will lead to interaction. systems predicted the rise of flat screens, high-definition televisions andnews whenever you wanted Negra pante became the co-founder of the lab and its director for 20 years when we were demonstrating these things in let's say 885 886 87 um, it was really considered new It seemed like magic is indistinguishable from magic. You were heading east on Main Street on 19. 1979, MIT developed a cinematic map that predates Google Street View by decades.

You were heading north through Asra. Now notice what is so common today that you didn't even notice it was playing. the screen, if you had seen that on 60 Minutes in the 80s, you would have been surprised and perhaps dazzled by one of the first flat screens it was 6 inches x 6 in black and white it was a $500,000 piece of glass it cost half million half a million dollars that piece of glass and I said that piece of glass will be 6 feet diagonal with millions of

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color pixels in 1997 the lab also gave birth to Siri's grandfather and Alexa nomatic wake up good I'm listening go to my email where you want to go and in 1989 he created BYT navigation which he called backseat driver.

They're right at the stop sign and the patent attorneys at MIT looked at it and said this will never happen. It has to be done because the insurance companies won't allow it, so we're not going to patent it. Look through the glass-walled labs today and you'll witness 400 projects in progress. He's developing pacemaker batteries that recharge with your heartbeat taxis autonomous tricycles you summon with your phone phones that do retinal eye exams Ariana te I will tell two stories and teaching robots to get us thinking that tomorrow's devices have a chance to do much more and fit better into our lives by Professor Patty MZ ran the graduate program's student admissions program for over a decade we really selected To people who have a passion, we don't have to tell them to work hard, we have to do it.

Tell them to work less and sleep occasionally. How often does a student come to you with an idea and you think we're not going to do that? Actually, the crazier the better. Normally, there are some blood vessels that circulate through Adam Hor Horowitz's idea. He was so crazy that he was one of the 50 new students admitted last year out of 1300 applications. He was really interested in a dream state in which you start dreaming before you become completely unconscious and in which you continue to have ideas just as you are about to do so. go to sleep time to go to sleep the har horowitz system plant dream ideas remember to think about a mountain then record conversations with the dreamer during that semi-conscious moment before you fall asleep tell me what you're thinking i'm making an origami pyramid she The dream of The origami pyramid was influenced by the robot saying the word Mountain.

It has long been believed that this is the time when the mind is most creative. Horowitz hopes to capture ideas that we often miss the next morning, so it's basically like a conversation where you can ask, hey Jibo, I'd like to dream about a rabbit tonight, I'd be on the lookout for that unconsciousness trigger and then, just when you smack your lip, he activates the audio and asks you what you're thinking about. you record all that sleep talking and then when you fully wake up you can ask for those recordings and when he brought this idea to you what did you think was really crazy?

Welcome to the world of bodies and movements nearby in the laboratory of Hugh Her, Everett. Lawson's brain is connected to his prosthetic foot, a replacement for the clubfoot he was born with, with the very definition of a leg, limb or ankle, it is going to change dramatically with what they are doing, not only is it complete , is 150%. You feel directly connected, uh, yeah, when I fire a muscle really fast, it totally fires. His team has electronically connected the computers in the robotic foot to the muscles and nerves in Lawson's leg, which he can not only control through his thoughts, but can also sense.

The synthetic limb design feels like the joints move as if they were made of skin and bone, so you're going to try it out for the teacher. The necessity of it was the mother of invention. He lost his legs to frostbite at age 17 after becoming stranded. a winter storm while climbing mountains in that recovery process my limbs were amputated I design my own limbs I returned to my sport of mountaineering I was climbing better than I had achieved with normal biological limbs that experience was very inspiring because I realized the power of technology to heal, rehabilitate and even expand human capacity Beyond the natural physiological levels, you develop the legs that you wear today, each leg has three computers and 12 sensors and they run these calculations based on the sensory information that comes in and then what is controlled.

It is a motor system like a muscle that propels me while I walk and allows me to walk at different speeds. What will this mean for people with disabilities? Technology is liberating, it removes the shackles of disability from humans and the vision of the media lab is that one day through advances in technologies We Will We Will eliminate all disability, so that was a big deal because the current Director of the media lab is Joey ETO, a four-time college dropout and one of those misfits the lab prefers after success at a high-tech company. Capital, you came here to preside over the laboratory's 30 professors and an annual budget of 75 million dolls, how do you pay for all this so that we have 90 companies that pay us a membership fee to join the Consortium and then, because everything comes in a single boat?

We can distribute the funds to our faculty and students and they don't have to write grant proposals. It is not necessary to ask permission. They just do things. Any of these companies lean on you from time to time and say, "We need something." product here they do it I've fired companies for that um you fired them yeah I've told companies you're too results oriented maybe we're not right for you. Sponsors, including Lego, the toy maker, Toshiba Exxon Mobile and General Electric, take first place. crack in

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the laboratory has 302 patents and counting we are inside the laboratory we have Caleb Harper's idea it is so big that it does not fit in the building so MIT donated the site of an abandoned particle accelerator for this trained architect who is now building Farms welcome to the farm, he calls these food computers Farms where the conditions are perfect, they are all able to control the weather, so they make a recipe with this amount of CO2, this amount of O2, this temperature, so we created a world in a box that most people understand if we say, oh, tomatoes and Tuscany on the North Slope taste so good and you can't get it anywhere else, that's the genetics in those conditions that cause that beautiful tomato, so we studied that inside these boxes with sensors and the ability to control the climate of Tuscany. in a box Tuscany in a box Nappa in a box Bordeaux in a box now these are plants that you are growing in the air yes, these basil plants do not grow in the soil but in the air the plant is super happy without dirt air saturated with a custom blend of moisture and nutrients, then each of these are drops that fall into the reservoir, Food Computers grow almost anything anywhere, What have you learned about growing cotton?

So cotton is actually a perennial plant, meaning it would grow, you know, all year round, but it's treated as an annual, we have a season, so in this environment, since it's perfect for cotton, we have had plants for 12 months. So how many crops can you grow in a controlled environment like this? Up to four or five seasons can be harvested. growing on average three or four times faster than they can grow in the field. The media lab's unusual growth flows from its refusal to commit to contract targets or next quarter's earnings; It's simply an exploration ship that goes wherever a crazy idea might come up. lead we can think about the future what the world is like 10 years 20 years 30 years how it should be you know that the best way to predict the future is to invent it if you have ever had a fantasy of flying on a bumper Stopping traffic in a flying vehicle can be possible sooner than you think, not with a flying car but with a battery-powered plane called eval, a clumsy acronym for electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, as we first reported in April. spend billions of dollars to create tolls for electric vehicles that will function as air taxis that take off and land from what are called verp ports on top of buildings, parking lots or helipads in congested cities.

Electric vehicles promise a faster, safer and greener mode of transportation that will potentially change the way we work and live sounds too good to be true, we went for a fun ride to find out. I'll assemble the plane if you're ready, yes, confirm totally clear above if this looks like a large drone, I'm about to take off, that's nice. What's breaking ground right there is a single-seat Evol called hexa powered by 18 propellers, each with its own battery, requires no jet fuel, you're in control, onboard computers automatically adjust based on altitude and wind, I can really feel the wind here, so all I can do.

What I had to do was use a joystick to control the movement and speed of the hexa. It took me about 30

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of pre-flight training to master it. Use that yaw to turn 90°. The wonderful hexa is still in its testing phase, so I had to stay close. to chief pilot Jace Maau and his ground crew, but they say it flies up to 195 feet in the air and 24 mph when ready, you can return home, the batteries last up to 15 minutes. I was going to try to land on the camera, yes. absolutely to land, I maneuvered hexa into position, I pressed a button and the computers did the rest right there, you're on the ground and the props are spinning down, that's cool, so grab a piece of cake, that was amazing, it's very fun, wow, I just want to like taking off with it.

I know Matt Chason is the CEO of Austin-based Lift Aircraft, which makes Hexa. He imagines a future where commuters will use it to avoid rush-hour traffic. You can fly 10 million in 10 minutes instead of spending more than an hour. roads during rush hour congestion would be something that in the future an individual owns and flies from home to somewhere. We don't consider individual ownership to be very practical. These are very expensive planes. We see fleets of planes being placed in places. where we provide maintenance we provide training and people can come and basically pay per flight, but there is still a long way to go.

Federal, state and local regulators, not to mention the nation's airspace, are not ready for hundreds of thousands of travelers piloting their own electric vehicle tolls. in the skies over congested cities to give people a taste of the future, Chason has now designed Hexa as an ultralight vehicle, meaning it doesn't have to go through the complex Federal Aviation Administration certification process but it also can't fly over populated areas. Chason plans to start offering rides to paying customers for $250 by the end of this year. The initial market you see is essentially Joy travel for people. Yes, I think there is a huge market for people to simply experience the excitement and joy of a flight around the world.

All kinds of EV TOS, cargo carriers, air ambulances and a host of air taxis are being developed, some with pilots, some without. The Air Force is investing, so Airbus and American Airlines and dozens of companies are already working with the FAA, it's not flying cars. That sci-fi movies didn't anticipate, but when you think about it, I look back over the arc of my own career. I have been a pilot for 42 years and I am amazed at the amount of innovation that has taken place. Billy Nolan was head of security. for the FAA before being named acting administrator in March, how difficult the certification process is because there are a lot of moving parts to this, first we have to certify the design of the aircraft itself and then we look at how it will work. if it is autonomous we look at where it will operate, that means how we will place it within our nation's airspace, so once it reaches that safety threshold and only until it meets that threshold, we will be prepared to certify that some vehicle toll companies electric are Along the way, we flew in a gas-guzzling helicopter with one of the favorites in this Air Taxi arms race, Joe Ben Beverly, CEO of Joe Aviation, took us to theseremote facility in California where it was testing its Joby toll EV plane while it landed, it felt like the old guard meeting the new, obviously it's a combination of a helicopter and a plane exactly so it can take off like a helicopter, but it flies with the efficiency of an airplane.

Bever has been working on the job for more than a decade. It has six propellers and four batteries in its wings and will function as an air taxi with a pilot and four passengers. He says it can fly 150M on a single charge and has a top speed of around 200M per hour. Why is this design so vertical? Taking off is important so we can get you where you want to go. We don't need a huge runway and then with a wing it gives you the efficiency to fly far and fly fast on your BLX Alpha authorized flight because it's still being We proved that the Joby was piloted remotely by a nearby ground team, Li, for the flight, they started the engines, unlike a helicopter, the Jobbe didn't need time to warm up, it took off in about 20 seconds, that's it, it's really quiet.

We wanted this to sound more. Like wind in the trees than that of a helicopter, noise levels are a critical issue as high altitude electric vehicles are intended to take off and land close to where people work and live, this is below the noise level background of many cities, you know, I go with my deceleration meter on my phone and measure the sound levels, that's what you've been doing for 10 years exactly because we needed to make sure the plane was quiet enough. Bever studied mechanical engineering at Stanford, where he invented this popular flexible camera tripod and later created a company that made flying wind turbines, but Joby remained an elusive dream.

There were definitely skeptics. Even you know good friends of mine who didn't believe this could be done with batteries and electric propulsion. Battery technology simply did not exist. it wouldn't work there, yeah, I never hired John Wagner outside of Tesla where he helped develop the revolutionary car batteries. At Joby, he discovered a way to make the batteries lighter but still powerful enough to get the 2-ton Evol off the ground. In terms of battery power and electric motor power, typical airplanes may have one large engine, but we can have six motors distributed throughout the airplane and thus operate much more efficiently.

The weight of everything must be the maximum. Something absolutely important, so how do you make an airplane as light as possible? Basically, you have to design each piece. The exterior of the Jobe is made with layers of lightweight carbon fiber. The batteries, as well as the computers, electronics and motors, are built under the direction of John Wagner. Watch as his team shakes and spins the cakes to ensure they meet the FAA's rigorous safety standards. They have to certify that the aircraft is safe and capable of flying according to their standards. They also have to certify the production of all their parts. exactly and the operation the pilot training the maintenance uh steps every facet is heavily regulated all of this costs a lot of money Toyota has invested around $400 million in Jobby and Bever took the company public last year.

I think the texture is good. Billionaire Paul Shiara, co-founder of the website Pinterest, has also invested a small fortune as CEO of his work and says they will launch in up to three cities and that passengers will eventually end up paying around $3 to 4 per mile to fly a little more than an average Uber ride. Can you explain me as a passenger? How do I look like I want to get to JFK airport? It's fantastic. -To stop traffic, what do I do? I take out your phone, pull out an app and with one click you're booking the entire trip, so a car will come to wherever you are in Manhattan and take you to the takeoff and landing location. port and you get in your Joby and it takes you to your final destination, now maybe there is a car at the other end or you are just walking to the end if people take cars to and from ports, right? just increase congestion if we can, you know, eliminate 80% of the miles that people could be traveling and move those miles from congested roads to the air.

I think that will have an impact, but just a few weeks after I saw this OB plane fly, it crashed in February due to what federal investigators called a component failure, no one was hurt, but the EV total was total . Beverly says that's all part of the testing process, and he's as optimistic now as he was when we interviewed him. You are far from getting the first job in the sky with passengers, that is why we will launch our service in 20124. Do you think you can do it that quickly? Yes, there have been many companies that have said: "We are going to do this in 2 years and then it doesn't happen, we are very sure that there is also a lot of confidence in Whiskey Arrow, although the Vall that they are developing will be even more complicated to bring to market because it is completely autonomous, there will be passengers. but there is no pilot on board, you are not just discovering an electric vehicle, you are discovering a fully autonomous vehicle, that's right, let's go for it, you and I talked about it, CEO Gary gon says which are on track to spend approximately $2 billion the company is funded by Boeing and Google co-founder Larry Pagee They have been testing the technology for the past eight years.

Control Z into position for takeoff. of test have you really done? So close to 1,600 test flights without you know, knock on wood without incident, deactivating LIF now we saw one of those test flights in Hollister California, a team of engineers about half a mile away started the Vall with one click of the mouse, the entire route was pre-programmed why autonomist why Go this route, so let's go directly to self-management. There are several reasons: One, it's safer, he says, because most plane crashes involve human error. Much of commercial aviation is already automated and sees the entire evaluation industry going in that direction.

Eventually he is determined to get there. First, we do it primarily from a safety perspective, but also at scale, so if you don't have a pilot on the plane, it's less expensive, you don't have to do pilot training, you're flying for passengers, we can charge less. We don't want this to be a premium service like a helicopter, we want it to be a service that is affordable to the masses. There is a psychological obstacle for people to get on a plane that does not have a human at the controls, of course, and so what we are trying to do is that each passenger can be in verbal communication with the ground, they can talk to a pilot whenever they want, so everything is designed for comfort.

It will take time, this will not happen overnight. wants to launch whs' four-seater air taxi service in the world's 20 busiest cities in the next decade. well you don't give a date of when you think it will be operational yeah you know why we don't do it because they don't have control of that part the FA is uh in Europe it's called yasa they are in charge so when certify the plane to fly, it's when you fly, the FAA won't say when an autonomous electric vehicle might be certified, but Acting Administrator Billy Nolan told us that ordering a piloted air taxi by 2024 is within the realm of possibilities, the challenge for Our goal is to ensure that innovation doesn't come with costly security, but we're clearly seeing something fantastic emerging.

I think this is real I mean this is no longer just a fantasy we want to be very careful we want to be very measured but you're absolutely right this is real and this is happening we've come a long way from where it was just you I know it's just one time ago decade we do not often think about how the sense of touch makes our lives possible. We grab a paper coffee cup with the perfect strength to hold it but not crush it. Our feet always find the ground, except for people with artificial limbs. or those with spinal injuries the loss of touch can put the world out of reach 17 years ago the Department of Defense launched a $100 million project to revolutionize prosthetics Most notable is how the feeling is returning to people like Brandon Prestwood, for me it was a battle if I wanted to live or die, you weren't sure if you wanted to live, no, I didn't know if I wanted to or not.

Brandon Prestwood's battle began with the loss of his left hand in 2012. He was on a maintenance crew reassembling an industrial conveyor belt when someone spun it. My arm was dragged in almost to the shoulder, crushing the bones in my arm and feeding me. my arm through a gap of about an inch, how did they save your life? The other guys on the mat jumped in, basically started taking the machine apart. Once we pulled it apart, I was able to look inside and see what was there and, uh, one of the gentlemen. He was a Vietnam vet and the Vietnam vet knew what to do, yes, the Vietnam vet knew the tourniquets, but Presswood lost his hand and couldn't get back to work.

Go eat this, yeah, that sounds good after four years with a hook, he told his wife Amy. he wanted to volunteer for experimental research involving surgery at the VA. I wasn't 100% on board to begin with, but I knew he had his mind set that he had to do this and I couldn't stop him six years later, thank you. to the VA Department of Defense and Projects Presswood controls this hand with nothing more than his thoughts everything still feels good probably when he spins it here electrodes implanted in the muscles of his arm pick up electrical signals from his brain for movement a computer translates those hand signals How about the middle finger?

Now sensors in the plastic fingers are connected to nerves in his arm to give him back a basic sense of touch. He closes his eyes. Tell me when you feel any of these. What he can demonstrate with his eyes closed. The little finger Index. Not that. Medium bad still requires a bit, but it's not bad. Biomedical engineer Dustin Tyler leads This research at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland VA touch is about connection, it's connection to the world, it's about connection to others, it's connection to yourself, right, I want That is to say, I never experience having no contact, it is the largest sensory organ in our body, so go ahead.

Tyler first tried an artificial connection in 2012. He volunteered it and wondered what would happen, so he worried if it would be all his hand. Would it hurt? Wouldn't I feel anything? We had no idea. So one of those big moments in my career was when he came in, we first activated the stimulus and he stopped for a second and said, That's my thumb, that's the tip of my thumb. it happened immediately it didn't require any brain training no, that was the beauty of it my thumb Brandon Presswood remembers the moment it happened to him those are my fingers I'm feeling my fingers that I no longer have feeling them it's a definite feeling, he told us, but different, it doesn't feel exactly like my right hand, it's a tingling sensation, it's not painful, it's like if your hand had been asleep right at the end, right before you woke up. that's nice to me, that's a nice tickle, let's see if you can make a cherry here a tickle that's light with a light touch but gets stronger the harder you squeeze your eyes closed, you can pinch a cherry firmly enough to pluck it from its stem. but don't crush him, he can feel that this is light.

I had to use my lightest touch, so if I hold this right here with an empty egg, I can feel it here and here, it's a feeling from over a decade ago. in process at the beginning of this research, how did you imagine this would be possible? I didn't imagine it, I thought, I imagined it wouldn't be possible. slan Ben Maya of the University of Chicago is among the world's leading experts in the neuroscience of touch. In 2008 he joined the Department of Defense's project to revolutionize prosthetics, but he didn't think the Pentagon knew what it was up against: there are 100 one billion neurons in the brain interconnected with 100 trillion synapses, I mean the human being.

The brain is like the most complex system in the known universe, too complex, I believed that it directed electrical stimulation to exactly the right neurons and when we stimulate electrically we activate hundreds of thousands of them at the same time in ways that would never happen naturally, it just seemed as if That impoverished interface with this nervous system would never do anything useful, and it turns out I was wrong. His own research proved him wrong. How are you doing Scott, nice to meet you, nice to meet you, Scott with volunteers, including Scott Embry. and you can feel it in my fingertips whose movement and sense of touch are limited by an injury to thecolumn from a car accident.

Computer ports in emb's skull are connected to the motor and sensory parts of his brain. The electrodes capture electrical signals from the brain. that were intended for the muscles, a computer translates those signals to the robot's arm. We first saw this brain-machine interface 10 years ago at the University of Pittsburgh, but there was no sensation back then. The index finger in collaboration with pit neuroscientist San bin Maya showed that touch signals could return to the brain, how is it possible to know which part of the brain is the tip of the index finger? We took Scott and put him in an fMRI scanner and then had him imagine him moving his thumb. moving your index finger imagine moving your digits as we monitor your brain activity and here are the sensory and motor parts of the brain that are involved in the half-lit ring index hand there are challenges eventually the brain builds scar tissue on the implants Limited the motor electrodes but the one patient's implants have lasted 8 years counting Scott IM has been working for over two years you have been the subject of this work for years yes and I wonder why you wanted someone else to have the opportunity to become independent again, the most meaningful work of your life, yes sir, 100%,

great

independence may not be any prosthesis and we saw this amazing possibility with a pioneer Austin Bean, his brain impulses are not rooted in a robot but in implants in his own arm that fire his muscles, What function did you have in this hand before the implants?

Oh, absolutely nothing, you couldn't move it at all now, so all I can do is shrug and move it, unfortunately, that's all it came back. After my accident, he was on vacation celebrating his college graduation when he plunged into a submerged Sandbar and left him quadriplegia. Now motor and sensory impulses flow through ports in Bean's skull and a computer without passing through his damaged spine. B clothes. The research is led by bolu AO a. biomedical engineer at Case Western Reserve University, our goal is to restore full functionality to the upper arm, including dexterous hand function and the ability to extend the hand so that Austin and others who have suffered a serious arm injury the spinal cord can regain a certain level of functional independence. my arm forward, the cradle under your arm only supports the weight, all the movement is yours, it requires effort, you have to concentrate a little faster, open hand, relaxed hand, closed hand, relaxed hand, open hand, relaxed hand and the computer needs frequent adjustments, how?

That feels good, but his parents, Shelly and Brad, showed us where this could lead. Carrot or would you like to eat a good granola bar? I'll have the granola bar. I thought Bean retained limited sensation after his injury, making him ideal for testing the artificial sense of touch, potter's finger, so if I can extend his motor skills first, let me open my hand so you can continue to grow, squeeze it around, you'll feel like I really start digging right there, you've got a hold on him, yeah, he really lets go. yes, and I will raise my arm again, congratulations, yes, thank you, thank you very much, incredible progress is coming quickly.

Danny Werner lost his foot in Vietnam, he's going, but 47 years later he's back online playing on an artificial foot, can you feel that? your toes, yes, which helps you maintain balance, climb stairs, and walk on uneven ground. Brandon Prestwood's next device will replace some cables with Bluetooth connections, especially the Thumb Thumbs. The cost of their experimental platform and surgery on it is estimated at approximately $200,000, but an eventual commercial system may cost much less and offer priceless moments. What did it mean to you to feel Amy's hand in yours? The world was a whole person again. I didn't have to worry about those dark thoughts coming back.

It's just giving me my husband back. Who means everything to me? He is himself again because the feeling of feeling is a big part of what makes us human, maybe that's why when we see a tender moment it is said to be touching I love you.