Texas Instruments To Showcase Technology Enabling Innovative Prosthetic (Artificial Limbs) Solutions

TIDC 2006 to showcase the Boston Digital Arm From Liberating Technologies

Bangalore November 23, 2006 – Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) [NYSE:TXN] a world leader in Analog, Signal Processor and Microcontroller (MCU) technologies will showcase the world’s first thought controlled "Bionic Arm" at the Texas Instruments Developers Conference India to be held on Nov 30 and Dec 1, 2006 at Bangalore. For more details on TIDC India 2006, please visit ti.com/tidcindia2006

The Boston Digital Arm from Liberating Technologies (Massachusetts, USA) is driven using electrical or myoelectric signals that are sent from the brain allowing amputees to rotate the wrist and arm, bend at the elbow, grip with the hand and, incredibly---just as someone with a fully functioning arm would. To date, artificial arms have been mechanically controlled requiring users to physically control artificial arms by flexing their shoulders to actuate a pulley system. The ‘bionic arm’ was the grand winner in the “Personal Health” category in the “Best of What’s new Awards” organized annually by Popular Science magazine.
The arm is dramatically more flexible and capable than most prosthetic devices, due to the control optimized performance and integration offered by TI’s TMS320C2000™ DSP based digital signal controllers.

“When Liberating Technologies developed their system, they considered both MCUs and digital signal controllers,” said Andrew Soukup, C2000™ marketing manager, TI. “They selected TI’s C2000 controllers because of their vastly superior abilities to generate pulse width modulated (PWM) signals for the most efficient method of driving the DC motors that are used in prostheses. One TI digital signal controller gave Liberating Technologies the ability to drive five motors, expandable to nine with an add-on module. In contrast, some competing solutions require two MCUs to drive only three motors.”

TI’s C2000 controllers provide the world’s first bionic arm with the performance and integration to process signals from myoelectric sensors to control up to five motors, allowing users to accomplish tasks like reaching for and grabbing an object at the same time.

Traditional artificial limbs are limited to controlling only three joints one at a time – the elbow, wrist and hand. Liberating Technologies identified control system inflexibility as the primary limiting factor in upper limb prosthetic performance and was determined to leverage the latest advancements in control technology when developing the Boston Digital Arm.

About Texas Instruments Incorporated

Texas Instruments Incorporated provides innovative DSP and analog technologies to meet our customers’ real world signal processing requirements. In addition to Semiconductor, the company includes the Educational & Productivity Solutions business. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has manufacturing, design or sales operations in more than 25 countries.

Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on the World Wide Web.