In the second part Kamen talks about how the arm's control systems were developed, simplifying an 18-degrees of freedom movement space so that it could be controlled almost subconsciously by the user.
Part three is where Kamen talks about his not-for profit scheme to get young people interested in science through robots: "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology" (FIRST); "like sports, nobody ever walks around saying 'I wanna be second'."

Interesting stuff, as I said, and the Luke arm seems to have a pretty astounding future ahead of it. I can't help thinking I'd've asked a few more direct questions though. Is the arm dexterous enough for it to let a wearer/user use the toilet? When the Luke arm gets to that level of sophistication—and, more importantly, when its developer/users trust it enough to do intimate tasks like that with it—that's the point at which I reckon the arm will stop being a science-technology showpiece and really make a difference in people's lives. Over to you in the comments. [Kara.AllthingsD]

Dean says that fatalities are down because of battlefield tech and triage methods. But that many soldiers are coming back missing limbs. He wanted to make an arm to replace their missing ones. He wants it sensitive enough to pick up a grape or allow soldiers to use a razor to shave, but be self-contained in terms of power. And a two- year deadline.

He say that a year later, they built an 8.9-pound arm using titanium, custom motors, and so on. There's 18 degrees of freedom, and they're now seeing a demo of a man who is scratching his nose. Dean says he did this in one year.

The control techniques are revolutionary. He's playing a video of a guy who didn't have both his arms for 18 years, and learned how to use the arms effectively in less than two dozen hours of training. He's showing a video that shows a guy who knows how to punch, pass a Ping Pong ball to his friend and pour a drink for another man who is holding a cup with the same type of arm. Then the video shows Chuck, the man with no arms, for the first time in 13 years, feeding himself cereal.

Holy shit, now he's showing a video of a guy using the arm using only his MIND. He learned this technique in two days, but Dean says it was more like the system learned how to interface with the human.

Looking at what he's doing, the guy drinks and people applaud. It's been two days. But the amazing thing is that he's put the cup down so it's become a lower brain stem function in two hours of doing cup functions.

Attaching the arm directly to nerves required a lot of surgery.

But there are limited arm functions, even if it's very complicated. Learning how to control a back hoe, with four controls, takes years. And the arm has 18 degrees of freedom. But people don't learn how by using each degree. In fact, it's more efficient, Dean says. There are three degrees of freedom, so they did macros. With this, a man learned how to pick up bottles, nails and other items.

Attaching the arm was a challenge, day to day. Nine pounds on an arm is heavy over a few minutes, let alone a day. So they knew that no one would wear them because of that. So Dean designed air bladders that shift the weight on the body when passive (like fidgeting in a chair) and inflate to be hard when the servos in the arm detect load.

When they did a demo for the secretary of the Army, they showed a man picking up 12 grapes and eating them without breaking or dropping any.

You can literally use infrared light, reading signals going through the skull without any invasive insertion. That's what we're working on next as a controller.

Dean is taking five minutes to explain the plight of the modern world and the responsibility of the smart, rich people in the world to help change that. I'm not sure I have the words to express his thoughts, so I'll wait for the official D video and embed it here later.

Vid from All Things D:

[All Things D]

An ugly giganfatastic beast made of multiple boards right out of a Terry Gilliam movie set. It was faster and had wireless connectivity, something that the ARM model didn't had enabled. And obviously, it was untouchable and development oriented.

As you can see, while the Android platform is solid enough for development and testing, it seems we are far away from seeing actual products getting into the market. ARM told us that everything is still pretty much up in the air at this point, and the actual physical cellphone specification is still coming from the Open Handset Alliance.

We will update this post with more Android prototypes hands-on and impressions.

It's about as powerful as the first Pentium M chips (Banias), but while those idled at 5W and averaged 24.5W, this little guy sips as little as 0.1W in its idle state, with peaks up to just 2W on the 2GHz model. It's really cheap to pump out too, tapped for the $200 OLPC at one point.

It comes in a couple different flavors up to that 2GHz version. To get athletic performance—it's a full-fledged x86 chip, not a half-baked cutdown—out of an anorexic processor, Intel worked all kinds of design mojo, like a new quick-wake deep sleep state. It's still a bit too hungry for smartphones, though. So, while it's a neat piece of silicon, as Ars says, it's still got a ways to go, especfially with stiff competition from ARM and TI. But that's a good thing.

Jesus Díaz: How the heck did you get your hands on a giant industrial robotic arm?
Aaron Rasmussen: My friend had it for his company, and it was caught in some sort of accounting limbo. So he agreed to let us use it if we didn't break it. We had to give it back after, sadly. That robot goes for about $70,000.

JD: OK, so that was free. What about the cost for the whole project? I saw that you "rented" (buy and return) an HD camera for free from Fry's...
AR: The total cost was actually only about $1,000, or about $1,220 if you count the camera that gets hit by the bowling ball:

• Truck rental: $716.13
• Gas for truck $72.86
• Bowling Balls $60.00
• The pig entrails, water for us, carrots, watermelons, eggs and such came to around: $100
• We found scrap parts for the catapult arm
• We traded computer services for the heavy equipment (Skylife and tractor).
• The RV camper van was a junker from a friend of a friend.

Looking at the full video, it seems like the best way to spend a weekend and $1,000 with friends. I personally can't wait for some kind of laser arm version. [Mana]

Because these new Mooretown MID (mobile internet device) chips are an improvement on the ultraportable Menlow chips we have now—smaller, faster and consuming far less power while idling, many are saying that Mooretown's power to efficiency balance in Apple's true ultraportable could help bridge the application gap of phone and laptop. And while the fabled Mac tablet finding its home in the iPhone sounds great, honestly, it seems like the public is waiting on Apple to evolve more than the iPhone's current ARM processor. [digitimes via macworld]

Instead of being stuck with whatever capabilities the device came with, Mangini wanted the user to be able to customize the device to their liking by adding links such as GPS or a cardiometer. But to that same extent they could also go low profile and only snap on what they'll need for the day. Coming from a group of people who on any given day will have no less then 3 gadgets, this sounds like a beautiful dream. [Design Wave via Yanko]

Linux PC in a USB key [Electronista]

Here's what I recall about it. He was approached by Darpa to develop the worlds best prosthetic arm. Our men and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan deserve it. We owe it to them.

The General from Darpa gave Kamen basically this blue sky order: I want an arm that's so precise that a person could pick up a grape or a raisin and without looking be able to tell the difference.

At first Dean begged off. It was too hard, it was too resource intensive, DEKA had a lot of other projects on the table. But Dean said he'd go to military hospitals and meet with the people. He met with combat wounded and was so inspired by them and their courage in meeting the challenges of life missing one or two arms that he decided they'd give it the best shot they could.

And so began DEKA's attempt to make the worlds best prosthetic limb, and do it with a very short timetable, to get it to the people who would need it.

Next Dean talked about control for this arm. He talked about brain implants and how bad an idea that was, going inside someone's skull. But then he talked about stem-cell research, and making a small implant that wouldn't be in the brain, but somewhere else in the body, maybe in the shoulder. Something that would be self-contained and communicate with the arm wirelessly. He named a research team at a big university, I forget which one. They were working on the stem-cell part of it. But, he cautioned, it may not work. The stem-cell research might not work, or it might not work in time to put it in this arm. But clearly this was the key to two-way neural contact. Control AND feeling.

So if that didn't work, or not in time, they had a number of other control schemes that they were looking at, and they were all better than the current standard.

At this point, Dean described what current motorized limbs were like. They strapped against a shoulder, and if they moved at all, they're controlled by kind of jamming the opposing shoulder which pulls the strapped limb so that a button gets pressed on it. If they're motorized they have a kind of a hook, or in some cases a cosmetic hand.

These hands are kind of one-size or a couple sizes and a couple of skin colors fit all.

So the first thing on Dean's list was that these would be the best looking prosthetic arms ever. Number one, these arms would match the person. And this would be achieved by taking a cyberscan of the other arm and making an exact mirror image. With nails, skin tone, size, bone size, everything matching. If the person didn't have another arm, a match would be found.

The next thing to tackle would be movement. From the looks of the video, this is coming along nicely. I wonder what the control scheme actually is on this video. I don't know. But I do know that they're shooting the moon.

And I don't think there was a dry eye while he was describing this to us. It was like watching the impossible become real.

Thanks for the update, tipster. – Jason Chen

What most are assuming is that there is some sort of neurological interface, but I'm doubting that's the case. We do know that it was developed for military amputees and that people were literally crying in the audience during its premier. If you have more info on the device, do us a favor and share it in the comments. Until then, I'm assuming that this video is of the new Terminator that must be destroyed at all costs.– Mark Wilson

First Cyborg Arm [digg]
TED: Dean Kamen's Cyborg Arm [boing boing]

Imagine all the uses! You can use it to, you know, lift stuff and then move it a few inches. And… uh… well, I'm sure there are many other amazing things you can do with it as well. It's a limited edition doohickey, with only 999 being up for sale in Japan for $80 each. –Adam Frucci

Product Page [via Oh Gizmo!]

Topping off the facts is speculation that the main CPU is Marvell's PXA320, a "descendant of the StrongARM processor" which used architecture from ARM. Given the need to maximize battery life in a high performance, multi-function device like the iPhone, both the low-power processor and multiple-core approach make sense. – Matt Buchanan

What's Inside Apple's iPhone? Three ARM Processors [InfoWeek]

It's a good thing he wasn't about two-inches taller, or they'd be cleaning his brains off the cement floor right now. – Jason Chen

Robotic Arm Ride [hight3ch]

The chip runs on the ARM9 core, which has been found in control hardware for years. No equivalent clock speeds mentioned, but that's kind of the point.

ARM offers first clockless processor core [EETimes]

ARM unveils fastest-ever processor for mobiles [Reuters]