AI Bionic Arm

I've recently shared an article about brain-computer-interfaces as I think AI in MedTech is an incredibly exciting area at the moment. Here's another one, where AI is being used to infer intention from muscle twitches, in order to control a bionic arm with impressive fidelity. With some of the catastrophising that is happening around AI at the moment, reading about stories like this can help remind us of the enormously positive impact that AI can have.

In our last AI report, we predicted we would see increasing numbers of patents related to the combination of AI and robotics as AI techniques mature and are able to be applied to difficult real-world environments, and is exactly the sort of thing we had in mind. In our upcoming AI report for 2023, we will have a whole section looking at trends in patents for use of AI in MedTech. 

As AI is increasingly incorporated into physical products, it is important that companies revisit their IP strategy. If you have previously protected only your mechanical or electronic inventions, it is certainly worthwhile considering if there is valuable protection available for your software and control algorithms, too.

Coming back to the article, it is clear that both AI and robotics are likely to have far reaching societal impacts, but for a tangible example of the improvements that they can make to individual lives, stories like this are great to read and I'm looking forward to reading more of them!