Translator: Sandy Laguatan Reviewer: Reiko Bovee
When I was fourteen I had an idea.
At the time, all it was, was an idea.
But I was determined to make it into a reality.
This was my idea: this wireless animatronic hand.
And it's involved with a control glove that's wireless
that sends signals over to it to control it totally telerobotically.
Now at the time, I was fourteen.
I didn't really know anything about electronics, programming, circuitry,
really anything like that.
So, it was a big learning curve for me.
I turned to the Internet and found a lot of sites
that promoted learning and that really made learning easy and fun.
These sites include Spark Fun, Hack A Day, Instructables and the list keeps going.
Now, with this glove control hand there's a lot of applications.
The main applications I thought of was military.
For bomb defusal, for any kind of soldier out in the field,
essentially they can put on this glove
and instead of having them learn a new claw system.
it would be as if they were out there actually working in the field
and it would give a safety.
So you can see that I can accurately control each individual finger
and yeah, you can see that there's no wires attached or anything
so it's all wireless.
From there I kept going; I like this so much;
I like building things.
I started tearing down my closet in my room
trying to make more space within my room to add more equipement.
And, yeah, it really took off from there.
I ended up making this full robotic arm up to the shoulder.
At the time I was sixteen, and I didn't have whole lot of money.
I really only had the money from working over the summer.
And that was a challenge
but I think that's what really helped me in the end.
And one of the problems that I had was trying to find a compromise
beween strength and the cost for everything,
for the motors and so many different technologies out there in the world.
I ended up going with a geared DC motor to power the shoulder,
and it was a challenge even finding a motor to even lift itself up,
and I actually had to put a feedback system on the end of the motor
that would allow me to accurately control the angle of each motor
which also makes coding simpler in the end
and really makes it all come together.
I entered this arm into the science fair.
When I was there, this 7-year-old girl came up to me.
This was kind of the changing point of all this.
This girl had a prosthetic arm.
It was from the elbow to the fingertip.
It had one sensor and one motion: open, close.
I started talking to her parents more and more.
That alone was 8,000 dollars, and that's a lot of money.
The thing was, that she was seven,
that she would probably need about two or three of these
in the future because she's still growing.
That's hundreds of thousands of dollars,
and this was really the "aha" moment for me.
This was what really changed everything
and really inspired me to help a lot of people
with my designs and everything.
There are other prosthetics out on the market
that are similar to this and already do have solid control systems.
The main difference is definitely cost, but also how you control it.
Currently, we're starting to go into neurological implants.
That's an open spinal surgery; that's extremely dangerous.
I think we kind of jumped into it too soon.
It's an open spinal surgery, so it involves putting sensors
within your spinal chords that tap into your neurons.
There's actually a chance that the sensors could scar over
rendering it useless in the end.
My approach is to keep everything external.
This is an EEG headset, and these are muscle sensors.
With a combination of those two,
I can get a really accurate control system.
This also keeps the cost down, and you can actually easily conceal this
with a baseball cap, making it more publicly acceptable.
From there, the cost was the big factor with prosthetics, as you know,
and I wanted to keep everything cheap.
I didn't have a whole lot of money, so I really had to think outside the box
for a lot of things.
The original arm I made, the version you see,
that was about 900 dollars
and that was cheap enough for me,
but in the end I wanted it to become cheaper.
But I also wanted to increase functionality and the weight of it;
I wanted to keep that low, and I wanted to make it more human-like.
This is really where it's at now.
I designed every single part of this within a CAD program in the computer.
The reason why it's so low in cost now is it's all 3D printed,
and it's a really cool evolving technology now.
It's getting cheaper; it's getting more available to the public.
You can actually go online, buy a printer and be printing
within a few days now.
How it works is it's essentially a hot glue gun for ABS plastic.
ABS plastic is the same plastic that legos are made out of.
And what happens is it heats that up to the melting point.
It extrudes it and based on what model you made
with the CAD program,
it prints it out layer by layer until you get a physical form.
That also allows me to have really human-like designs,
keep everything light, keep everything durable,
and the product turns out really great and affordable.
Now there are a lot of different innovations that I used with this.
Even with the 3D printing technology,
I actually heated acetone up and used the vapor
to finish the 3D printed models.
to give a really nice glossy look and to have it look more professional
and actually that increases production time.
So it's a faster turn-around for prosthetics.
That really makes the final product that much better.
Now my main inspiration behind all this
was I really want to continue this into prosthetics.
I really want to help a lot of people.
I'm getting to that point
where this is starting to get into the prosthetic industry,
and it's really evolving into that point.
Actually, probably within a few weeks
I might have this hooked up to an MS patient,
It's kind of as a last wish type thing,
and that's really the main thing that keeps me going with all this.
I love the work and I'm all self-taught with everything.
And I hope to keep going with this.
There also are a lot of other applications and platforms for this including NASA.
NASA actually contacted me, and I'm actually going to work with them
to incorporate a lot of this newer technology
with neuro-control, different cost factors, different materials,
all sorts of different things to create this telerobotic platform
that actually will be going up into space and assisting astronauts.
So there's all sorts of different things that this can be used for.
But at the end of the day, I really want to help people
and really give them a new life.
Together we can push through movement of technology
and we can give the world a helping hand.
Thank you.
(Applause)