Nearly 2 million Americans are living without limbs.

But this is the age of the bionic breakthrough, and now man is meshing with machine, allowing people with no legs or arms the power to do just about anything they want.

A hike on a sunny beautiful day on Mount Washington turned into a battle against Mother Nature for a world class rock-climber's life.

Hugh Herr, PhD, said, "What was supposed to be a single day turned into four days."

The wind howled at 94 mph, and it got worse.

By the time it was over, frost bite had set in. Doctors amputated both of Hugh Herr's legs from below the knee.

Hugh is now a double amputee. He also has a doctorate in Mechanical Engineering.

Hugh said, "Today, when I stand, I stand on synthetic structures, titanium, silicone, carbon, completely supported by artificial means."

Hugh turned his tragedy into a mission and has become the bionic man who builds bionic people.

"It's fantastic to test my own technology," said Hugh.

His company, I-Walk, is releasing the world's first robotic ankle-foot prosthesis. It has an electric motor, five internal microprocessors.

The Powerfoot does not connect to nerves, but the military is working to close that gap. The military is implanting microchips on the surface of patients' brains to study a prosthetic robotic arm controlled by the user's thoughts.

The $100 million arm can rotate, twist, and bend in 27 different ways, the same 27 ways a human arm can move. You can see how each finger is controlled separately.

Dr. Alexander Dromerick, M.D., a neuroscientist at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, DC said, "I grew up on Star Wars, and it almost looks like that hand that Luke Skywalker had."

Neuroscientists at the National Rehab Hospital are already using another robotic arm called the I-Limb. Electrodes are attached to the end of a limb and pick up signals from the patient's muscles.

Those signals are sent to a computer inside the hand, which directs each finger to move.

Dr. Dromerick said, "Picking up a piece of paper, turning over a checker, picking up small objects, those kind of fine motor things, that's what it's allowing people to do."

It is giving Cheryl Douglass a freedom she thought she had lost when all four limbs came under attack by a rare infection.

Cheryl said, "Yeah, I'm pretty pleased because that means before long, I'll be back cooking more French dishes."

These are the first steps to making man and machine one.

The military's bionic arm will be the first device to be fast-tracked for review by the FDA under its newly-proposed "innovation pathway" initiative.

The initiative is designed to speed up the review of the most revolutionary new medical devices.