one of the biggest problems with the upper-limb prothetic devices is that the vast
majority of them that are advanced and have control that's just by thinking about it
cost $30,000 - $40,000. So they're very expensive.
Typically insurance companies in the US will reimburse up to around $3,000 for a prosthetic device.
And so these $30-$40,000 prosthetics, only a handful of people in the United States get them.
So one of the reasons why we are building our particular device is that we can achieve the same functionality of
these hands, however we can make them affordable to people not only in the USA,
but to people in developing nations as well.
The way our prosthetic hand works is that we
place electromyography sensors on the residual limb of the user. So when they
think about making a pinch, versus making a fist, versus opening their hand, versus making a three-finger grasp...
there's different patterns of muscle activity that happen in their residual limb.
And then we have a machine-learning algorithm that is able to pick up on
all those different patterns and drive the hand to do those motions.
And one of the nice things about it is that it doesn't matter what
state the residual muscles are in. As long as we can tell the difference
between the different actions, then the machine-learning algorithm will work.
So this is one of the latest prototypes of our 3D-printed prosthetic hand.
Everything that's in white here is 3D-printed with our 3D printer that's in the lab.
And inside of this palm is where all the electronics are housed; with the
microcontroller that can do all the machine-learning for recognizing the
different muscle signals.
So all the materials in the hand, including all the
electronics that I'm holding right now, cost only $290.
No commercial prosthetic device has any form of sensory feedback;
meaning that, if I lost my hand and was fitted with a prosthetic device,
if I tried to touch a table or hold a baby,
I won't be able to feel it at all.
So there's a pressure sensor in the finger.
And what's nice about this pressure sensor is it costs less than $5.
It's in everyone's cell phones. And we just cast about 10 cents of rubber over it.
And it turns into a highly sensitive touch sensor.
And so when that pressure sensor touches an object like a table,
for example, we can relay that pressure through electrical impulses on the skin
so that the user knows when he's touching an object and how hard he is
touching and object.
TECH-FEST ATTENDEE: That's cool.
TECH-FEST ATTENDEE: Well, it felt like it was vibrating up here. Like something that's really small is
quickly vibrating like right here. I mean, that's the best way I think I can describe it.
AKHTAR: Eighty percent of all amputees are actually in developing nations.
And less than three percent of them have access to affordable prosthetic care.
So we are designing a prosthetic that actually can be
accessible to everyone who needs them around the world.
In the summer of 2014, we actually went down to Ecuador
where we tried one of our earlier prototypes on a man who had lost his
hand 30 years prior to border skirmish between Ecuador and Peru.
And, within minutes, he was able to train the device and get it up and running.
And he was able to do motions with his hand that he hasn't been able to do in 30 years
And so his reaction was that a part of him had come back.
At the time we had been up for 36 hours trying to get everything to work.
So I was just relieved at first.
But afterwards, I was just so grateful to have that
opportunity to give this man the ability to do that which he hasn't been able to
do for so long.
One of the biggest advantages of doing 3D-printing is that we can rapidly
prototype all of these hands. It doesn't matter where we are.
So, you know, when we went down to Ecuador, they had a 3D printer there.
So we can prototype the hands there as well.
We can customize the colors. We can customize the materials.
We've used a material known as Ninjaflex to make the hands more rubbery and feel more skin-like.
We can also customize the size. So, depending on whether we're
making a hand for a child versus an adult, we can have different sizes.
We've gone through about four or five iterations of prototypes on this hand.
And every single time we're just trying to improve on it.
And, you know, in some of our first hands, the motors were located in the forearm.
But the thing is, if they still have a forearm, you can't place motors there.
So we had to come up with a design that moved all the motors into the hand.
And so, in our next design, we were using these wires to move all the fingers.
But then we quickly learned that these wires... they stretch all the time... they fall off of pulleys...
they grind on the pulleys.
And so we had to come up with a new design
that was purely mechanical in the hand.
Then we realized that... huh... 3D-printed, rigid prosthetics are going to be breaking all the time.
So we need to add that compliance factor to it.
And that's when we started to design these new fingers that
are made out of rubber and silicone and have this flexibility to them.
The reason why I'm so interested in helping out with prosthetics in
developing countries is that, when I was seven-years-old,
I actually met an amputee for the first time.
and she was a girl around my age living in poverty in Pakistan.
And i was just visiting Pakistan for the first time in my life.
And, at the time, I had wondered what could have led her to have this
life that she's living.
And, as I grew up, I realized that it was a lack of healthcare, safety, and financial resources.
So one of the reasons why I am so personally invested in this project is
because, one day, I would like to
hope to return to Pakistan... like I did when I was seven-years-old...
and help a child with an amputation get the prosthetic care that they deserve