IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015 - 71

Robotic
Prosthetics
Moving Beyond Technical Performance

FiguRe 1. Examples of
applications in which robotics
devices physically interact with
the human body. From top
left: (a) Surgery with minimally
invasive telesurgery with the
DaVinci robot ©[2015] Intuitive
Surgical, Inc.[3]. (b) Neuromotor
rehabilitation of the upper
limb following a cerebral
vascular accident with the
Armeo®Power, from Hocoma,
Switzerland. (c) Substitution
with the JACO device from
Kinova [4], which is fitted to
a wheelchair and help the
person to carry out activities
of daily living. (d) Assistance
with lower limb exoskeletons
for paraplegic patients (with
the Rewalk system [5]), or (e)
for healthy subjects in military
and industrial applications
(with the the Berkeley Bionics
HULC - Human Universal Load
Carrier [6]).1

DaVinci®
Intuitive Surgical

Armeo®Power, Hocoma

(a)

(b)

JACO®
Kinova

Rewalk®
Argo
(d)

(e)

1

(c)

HULC®

photo copyright credits: (a) davinci: www.intuitivesurgical.com/company/media/images/davinci_si_images.html.
"the following photographic materials are provided here exclusively for promotion, editorial and academic
use and/or media coverage of intuitive surgical and its products. this notification serves as an authorization
for publications to make duplicate copies of the available high-resolution scans for these uses only. reproduced images should be accompanied by the following copyright notice: ©[year] intuitive surgical, inc." (b)
hocoma: http://www.hocoma.com/mediencenter/pressebilder/armeo-manovo/. please always use these pictures in combination with the caption "picture: hocoma, switzerland." (c) Jaco: http://kinovarobotics.com/company/media/. (d) rewalk: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:rewalk_research.Jpg?uselang=fr. (e) hulc:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:human_universal_load_carrier.Jpg?uselang=fr

N. Jarrassé, M. Maestrutti, G. Morel, and A. Roby-Brami

W

hile physical interaction with robots is becoming common in many
domains, numerous devices are not appropriated by their users and
remain unused in the cupboard. This phenomenon is observed particularly with robotic devices that are designed to interact closely with the
body, especially if they are meant to compensate for a loss of sensory or
motor capacity. This article uses the more extreme example of prosthetics
to highlight the socio-anthropological and cultural phenomena affecting the

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2015.2425813
Date of publication: 19 June 2015

june 2015

∕

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

1932-4529/15©2015IEEE

71

http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/company/media/images/davinci_si_images.html http://www.kinovarobotics.com/com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:rewalk_research.Jpg?uselang=fr https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:human_universal_load_carrier.Jpg?uselang=fr http://www.hocoma.com/mediencenter/pressebilder/armeo-manovo/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015