Muscular Dystrophy Exoskeleton

Folks with muscular dystrophy and related ailments such as Lou Gehrig's disease suffer a progressive loss of muscle power. The muscles do not disappear, though - they just become too weak to do the job. People wind up wide awake, with normal intelligence, but unable to scratch their own nose or brush their hair.

EKG-type systems can detect electrical signals given off by muscular contraction. Even the weak muscles these folks develop still contract some, and thus emit a detectable signal. This could be used to develop an exoskeleton-type device. One could take this to the n-th sci-fi extreme, but here is a practical way it could be done. Start with the right arm. Use a transducer to determine over each major muscle group where the strongest signal is detectable. Put a tattoo dot there. The exoskeleton is slipped along the arm - I imagine a series of thin jointed rods running parallel to the arm, attached by cuffs at the wrist, elbow and shoulder. The leads are put on the tattoos each day by an assistant. Small motors in the exoskeleton pull the rods and with them the arm according to the detected muscle impulses.

The result: an augmentation system allowing the person to move the right arm and position the hand. They can then scratch their nose, brush hair, pick up the phone, type etc.