With the growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning in healthcare, even prosthetic limbs are becoming smart. These smart prosthetics can combine manual control with machine learning for more accessible and effective use. We are seeing a growth of machine learning in healthcare, where it is used to improve a patient's overall health, including providing accurate diagnosis and better treatment plans. Additionally, machine learning (ML) can also understand healthcare data by improving diagnostics and predicting accurate outcomes. One of the latest fields where AI and ML have been making an impact is prosthetics.

First, let me tell you how the story started. I was the lead in the machine learning team of a start-up company working on a smart gadget. The gadget was aimed to identify hand gestures based on muscle signals. The gadget had eight sensors sitting on the forearm and recording muscle signals. We were in the early stage and the product was not ready.

Albert Einstein famously postulated that "the only real valuable thing is intuition," arguably one of the most important keys to understanding intention and communication. But intuitiveness is hard to teach -- especially to a machine. Looking to improve this, a team from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) came up with a method that dials us closer to more seamless human-robot collaboration. The system, called "Conduct-A-Bot," uses human muscle signals from wearable sensors to pilot a robot's movement. "We envision a world in which machines help people with cognitive and physical work, and to do so, they adapt to people rather than the other way around," says Professor Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, deputy dean of research for the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, and co-author on a paper about the system.

Air Force veteran (1968-1975) Angel Camareno is fitted with a MyoPro device. Angel suffered a brachial plexus injury 40 years ago which led to reduced motion in his arm. Myomo, a spinout from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has created a robotic arm brace for people with limb paralysis from neurological disorders such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Multiple Sclerosis (MS) or stroke to help them regain movement with their hands and arms. The robotic arm brace, MyoPro, senses the patient's electromyography (EMG) signals through non-invasive sensors and restores function to their paralyzed arms. Patients who use the device are able to do things they were unable to do or found difficult to do before such as feeding themselves, doing laundry, carrying objects or even returning to work.

"We call them'flourishes'," says Aldo Faisal. "Kevin has this flourish where, because he can rotate his wrist 360-degrees either way, when he reaches for or passes you stuff he will add this flourish just for the fun of it. There's no need for him to do it, but he does it anyway. It's like if you pick up your teacup and you stretch out your pinkie finger… He doesn't think about it: he just does it." Faisal, senior lecturer in Neurotechnology at Imperial College London, is talking to WIRED about one of his'Pilots': the term given to disabled athletes taking part in the 2016 Cybathlon in Switzerland.