There's been a huge upsurge in cool prosthetic technology recently, thanks to a mysterious increase in the number of first world otherwise-healthy citizens who are suddenly stumbling around the place missing a limb or two. But while advances like bluetooth-controlled legs are undeniably awesome, they're only half of the equation needed before the Detroit crime rate is cut by someone part man, part machine but All Cop. Mechanical parts and squishy human brains have a bit of dysfunctional relationship at the moment - while machines can learn how to interpret the desires of twitching muscles, the gooey nervous system tends to get annoyed or dead when the machine tries to inject signals back.
While the technology for leg prostheses has advanced by leaps and bounds (literally — this guy got kicked out of the Olympics because his were so good), arm prostheses haven't followed suit. In fact, we're not much better off than the hooks and wooden arms that have been employed since the Civil War.
This looks like a job for Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter (I didn't see that one coming either, but I guess I should have). His "Luke arm" — yes, named after Skywalker — enables 18 degrees of freedom, a scant 4 degrees less than an actual arm. It enables the wearer to "to pluck chocolate-covered coffee beans one by one, pick up a power drill, unlock a door, and shake a hand." It features six different grip settings, and fits a modular design so any level of amputee can use it. It weighs 3.6 kg and runs on lithium batteries.
But the way amputees control the arm is just as incredible:
We all remember the scene in Empire Strikes Back" when Luke Skywalker 
