A series of unfortunate accidents ended Stephane Bedard’s dream of making the Canadian national mountain biking team. While attending a rehabilitation clinic for treatment to his injuries he noticed amputees who were struggling with their prostheses and wondered why technology had not played a bigger role in helping them to adapt. Bedard’s subsequent work in human bionics has produced the POWER KNEE, the world’s first powered lower-limb prosthesis.
At an early stage of these remarkable developments Bedard laid down some ground rules on what makes a bionic device, as far as applications of human-interface systems go, and how the concept differs from other motorized devices:
The law of the TRUE LINK
“For any human-system interface, a system is considered as a bionic device if and only if the system owns the necessary resources to observe continuously the whole state of the respective human-system interface.”
…meaning that the device can continuously SENSE and monitor where it is going and what is happening externally as well as its interaction with the body.
The law of AUTONOMY
“For any human-system interface, a system is considered as a bionic device if and only if the system owns the necessary resources to address by itself all functional requirements of the respective interface. Moreover, the autonomous functioning must not be performed against the Law of the True Link.”
...meaning that the device can process incoming data, THINK for itself and execute by itself the appropriate function.
The law of ADAPTABILITY
“For any human-system interface, a system is considered as a bionic device if and only if the system owns the necessary resources to adapt by itself to any perturbations occurring inside and outside the respective human-system interface. Moreover, the self-adaptation process must not be performed against the Law of the Autonomy and the Law of the True Link.”
...meaning that the device has the resources to adapt by itself to changing environmental and human conditions and ACT accordingly.
The three laws are intrinsically linked and none of these attributes must work against or at the expense of another.