Via Yanko Design, industrial designer Tillmann Beuscher has designed an affordable artificial limb allowing land-mine victims to continue being mobile. The design won an IF Concept Award this year.
Aimee Mullins is an actress, model and athlete, has a dozen pairs of designed artificial limbs and 'encourages designers to change the idea of "disability" and the definition of beauty by bringing their talents to both the science and the art of designing prosthetics' TED blog. See her talks at TED here and here.
Oscar Pistorius has been mentioned here before, another amazing athlete who uses a 'Cheetah Flex-Foot' by Ossur. Van Phillips is the inventor of the Flex-foot, 'The biggest obstacle, he said, is an amputee’s imagination. Too many do not believe they can walk with ease or run again — until they meet Phillips or someone wearing one of his designs.'
Apart from the above mentioned transtibial prosthesis, emerging technology in the field of transhumeral prosthesis include robotic limbs and direct bone attachment. The Luke arm above, is from Deka, Dean Kamen's company.
Proto 1, developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program by APL at John Hopkins University. The prototype is the first fully integrated prosthetic arm that can be controlled naturally, provide sensory feedback and allows for eight degrees of freedom—a level of control far beyond the current state of the art for prosthetic limbs. More at NYT here.
Will the future of prosthetic limbs be more like the Six Million dollar man or will it become more robotic? Hans Alexander Huseklepp seems to think so, his Immaculate concept uses globe joints allowing for greater freedom of movement which would look odd if the arm looked anatomically correct.
Whether it is robotic suits and the future or war, or robots that work tirelessly researching yeast, the future looks interesting to say the least.
Neill Blomkamp is working on District 9, based on Alive in Joburg, a short film about alien migrant workers in Africa. Keep up to date here and be sure to watch Tetra Vaal, where robots are used as policemen in a not too distant South Africa.
