On May 9, I posted a video of a speech by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Biomechanics Laboratory Director Hugh Herr explaining that he foresees a future where people with prosthetics will move just as well as they did before they lost their limbs.
I found the video very inspiring, particularly the end, which showed a professional ballroom dancer performing in public for the first time since her left leg was blown off by the bombs placed near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Dancing with a prosthetic limb, Adrianne Haslet-Davis (pictured above) danced like she had never lost her leg.
The video of Herr’s March, 2014, speech at the famous TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference is 19 minutes long. Here it is.
I posted the video after writing an article on the subject for a client. I can’t repost the article here, but here are some facts that I found while researching the story:
* Herr is passionate about helping people who lost their limbs have a normal life because he has had prosthetic legs since severe frostbite damaged both of his legs after he was stranded in a blizzard for three days while he was mountain climbing in 1982 at the age of 18.
* Haslet-Davis has a bionic limb, which differs from “normal” prosthetic limbs because they’re active rather than passive. Here’s how Karis Hustad described a bionic limb in “Back on the dance floor: Boston Marathon victim inspires prosthetics innovation,” an article in The Christian Science Monitor, – “It has a series of motors, springs, and algorithm-running microprocessors which propel the limb forward based on where a limb is in stride. It's all inspired by the body’s muscle-tendon structure and movement. This creates a more natural gait, lessens the likelihood of osteoarthritis, and uses less energy to walk.”
* Haslet-Davis’ bionic limb is pictured in the Monitor story apparently detached from its recipient and attached to a laptop computer. “(MIT) team members are reprogramming the onboard microprocessors within the bionic limb with a new set of instructions that will enable Adrianne to dance naturally again,” the caption says.
* The scientists at MIT spent approximately seven months studying how dancers moved and embedded the data into Haslet-Davis’ bionic limb. The limb was “specifically programmed to respond to the various movements of dance,” according to an article entitled “Boston Bombing Survivors Are Getting Cutting-Edge Bionic Limbs.”
* The MIT Biomechanics Laboratory has connected bionic limbs to about 900 people, including about 400 American soldiers, since 2010.
* Herr has said that his ultimate goal is to connect bionic limbs to the brain via sensory technology so people will be able to feel through a prosthetic limb.
* Herr predicted in his videotaped speech that the technology for bionic limbs will become so advanced that “we will end disability.”
“Synthetic limbs will move like flesh and bone and feel like flesh and bone,” Herr told the TED Conference. “The technology is beginning to bridge the gap between disability and ability, between human limitation and human potential… We the people need not accept our limitations, but can transcend disability through technological innovation.”
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