The Feasible FES System: Battery Powered BION Stimulator

This paper discusses some of the advances and limitations of the field of functional electrical stimulation (FES) and why the field has difficulty in achieving its promise whenever many wires are used throughout the body. We take the stand that the great time for FES will be when the stimulators and sensors are injectable and wireless and thus make it feasible to have many stimulation/sensing locations in the body. It has taken a long time to get there, but we are getting close to having a coordinated wireless system. The only commercially successful FES devices that exist today are the cardiac pacemakers, the spinal cord stimulators, and, to a lesser extent, the cochlear implants, none of which have more than one or two cables placed in the body.