Name: This MIT Engineer Built His Own Bionic Leg
Uploaded: 2020-03-07T16:10:41.000Z
Duration: 10 min 3 s
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What we are doing in our lab right now is I think for the first time truly the first steps towards building cybernetic systems cyborgs

You know, we've been reading about this in our science fiction for years and it's finally starting to get there

My entire life I never thought that I would be where I am now having had an amputation

I have an opportunity to engineer my own body and I had always dreamed about that

The implications of making a seamless connection between the body and the robot means that we be end disability

My name is Everett Lawson, I'm a research assistant at MIT in the Media Lab. I

Don't know that I would necessarily call myself an inventor

and I like to make things that allow me to see and feel and experience things that I would have not otherwise been able to

Clubfoot and what it really came down to is that the bones were weaker?

So even just stepping off of a curb I could break my foot

I remember once I was running from a bear on a dirt road and I stepped on a rock and I broke my foot a

Few years ago my wife and I found out that we were going to have our son August and

I had reconstructive surgery to allow me to run around and chase my son

didn't heal my leg was just absolutely deteriorating and

The surgeon said well, we think that an amputation is going to be the best outcome for you

Happened to come to my office and saw me sitting there and

He literally grabbed me by the arm, and he said that's it

And he took me and he marched me downstairs across the lab down into hue hers lab

My name is Hieu her I'm a professor at MIT and I direct a research group called the biomechatronics group

We develop wearable robots robots that attach to the body mechanically and neroli

Determined that Everett would benefit from receiving the Ewing amputation this experimental surgery

In a traditional amputation and not only are they cutting through the bone but they're also cutting through all the muscles and tendons as well

They preserve as much of that musculature as they can and the relationship of those muscles via their tendons. I

Still have the musculature embedded into my limb, which means that I can have a direct

neuromuscular interface with bionic limbs and

That's how I started this relationship with the biomechatronics lab

My name is Matt Carney, I'm a PhD candidate here in the biomechatronics group and I have been building Bionic knees and ankles

Trying to push the limits of what's actually possible to get as close as possible or even better than biological performance

What's really interesting about everett is that because he's had this amputation that allows him to have this

Neural pathway that a traditional amputation doesn't necessarily have so that he can have direct control of the robot

How it works is that there are sensors that read the signals coming out of the muscles in my leg and

so when I fire a muscle that would say point your foot down it directly translates to a motion in the

A range of motion for the dorsal flushing feels really good. It does. Yeah, I

Remember the first time that I you know saw of Matt's robotic engine and he turned on the controls I

Wasn't seeing the mechanics of this robot attached to my body. I was seeing my body being

Continued all the way down to a foot that had a 1:1 relationship between the thought of motion and actual motion

So you can put it on we'll try it out we'll turn it up a little bit I

Well, yes Mord Anthony for heel strike. How does it feel? I just made it. That's way better quite a bit stiffer. Yeah

Working with Matt and the team in the position of being a subject it is a really interesting

but I also am an engineer and an inventor and you know, I also work on developing my own systems and

Rather than trying to translate my thoughts into motion. I'm looking at how do I get sensory feedback back in?

So I received this experimental surgery which preserved a lot of the musculature of my leg as well as portions of the nervous system

Spots on my leg that have an approximate sensation of the big toe the little toe the heel the middle of my foot

Prototyping building things in order to start exploring these sensations

Within the last 48 hours. I've been able to build an array of sensors. They go on to the bottom of my prosthetic

they'd send a signal back on to my residual limb a little bit of electricity across the surface of the skin to get the

This one and I have the sensation of my little toe. Oh

Do you help Papa? Do you want to help me do science?

You want to tickle the bottom of Papa's robot foot pop off the bottom all the way on the bottom

I'll push that one. Oh, I feel then. Can you push other buttons?

You're touching my pinky toe and my big toe

Hadn't thought some of this all the way through. Oh

August is born with bilateral clubbed feet the condition that I had but on both sides you

Know the science has changed a lot and they're able to do treatments to correct it

You know looking at my son my motivation for building

Bionic limbs came from thinking about the world that I want him to grow up in

You know, I think it's 2019 and it's about time we got robots on people

one hope coming out of this lab is that the work we were doing allows us to push the

Capabilities of what the human body is even capable of doing so that at some point, you know

It's not just I feel so bad that you lost your limb. Here's some prosthesis. It's more like oh I lost my limb cool

I can upgrade that limb as I get older. I can change all of the functionality of it

I have so much more capability now that I have this new robotic extension of my body

The things that we're developing now the prototype that I'm wearing today is just the beginning

Don't think it's ever going to stop it's not about building something that does X and I can just move on from there

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This MIT Engineer Built His Own Bionic Leg

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