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Dean Kamen is an amazing guy. We participate in his FIRST robotics program. The goal of the program is to inspire high school students to pursue engineering and technology careers. The program has done more to advance engineering education in the country than any other program.
I used to work in robotics (in manufacturing) and we could program robots do all sorts of impressive stuff but this was robots that were bolted to a machine chassis and doing limited, repetitive movements.
It's a whole new ball game when a robot is operating in free space. It must be absolutely wonderful for people who have lost their arms to once again be able to do even the most simple tasks themselves.
I would guess that the problem facing them in the long term is the fact that the robot arms cannot make decisions based on touch like we all do. Obviously artificial limbs have no sense of touch but if they can make them respond to thought already, who knows what they could do in the future?
Years ago I had occasion to interview a young man who had one of the early myoelectric arms. He demonstrated how he could pick up a styrofoam cup of cola -- but joked about the fact that he would often crush it if he didn't pay careful attention, due to the lack of sensory feedback.
Then he got a new, more advanced arm -- in the new arm, the sensors that picked up signals from the muscles in the residual limb, to translate the signals into arm and hand movements, were reversed from his first arm. For a while, he was constantly dropping things and crushing them, because his "muscle memory" in his upper arm was doing the opposite of what the new arm required.
And I will forever remember the look on a little girl's face who was born without forearms, when she had her first myoelectric arm fitted and was able to make the hand respond to her upper-arm muscle contractions.
