Medical Technology

Robohand uses 3-D printing to replace lost digits

Twelve-year old Dylan Laas got his Robohand in March

Richard Van As, a South African carpenter, lost four fingers from his right hand to a circular saw two years ago.

He was unable to afford the tens of thousands of dollars to get a myoelectric hand, which detects a muscle’s electric impulses to activate an artificial limb.

“After my accident, I was in pain, but wouldn’t take painkillers. I barely slept, and the more pain I had the more ideas I got,” he told The Associated Press. “Sometimes you have to chop fingers off to start thinking.”

He decided to build his own hand. After seeing a video posted online of a mechanical hand made for a costume in a theater production, he reached out to its designer, Ivan Owen, in Seattle.

Enter Robohand — a device that Van As and Owen invented that is made from cables, screws, 3-D printing and thermoplastic. It uses the rotation of a joint to enable five plastic digits to grasp. The device looks like a robot’s hand in a science fiction movie, costs about $500 to make and can be reproduced using plans on the Internet and a 3-D printer.

‘It looks cool. It makes me look like Darth Vader.’

– Twelve-year old Dylan Laas, who got his Robohand in March

Van As is now on a mission to spread the mechanism to people without fingers or hands all over the world. The two gadget-lovers collaborated on developing a design for the device for a wide range of ages that could be used to grab objects, unlike most existing arm prostheses. Van As has fitted Robohands on about 170 people, from toddlers to adults, thanks to donations.

At first they used a milling machine, making Van As a metal robotic forefinger digit that helps him work in carpentry to this day. That’s when they perfected the shape for the robotic fingers.

“Ivan was a gift to me,” Van As said.

Then they turned to 3-D printing which creates the device in plastic. The 3-D printer gives much greater flexibility, allowing the device to be re-sized on the computer for each user and then manufactured through the printer. A glove-like covering is fitted in thermoplastic, and then fingers are created on the 3-D printer by melting and stacking plastic to make Lego-like digits which are connected to the glove with small cables and screws.

The team got a boost when two printers were donated by the Brooklyn-based Makerbot, one for use in Johannesburg and the other for Seattle.

“What was taking us two weeks to put together took us 20 hours,” Van As said. He opened drawers full of bolts, screws and leftover hinges from the beginning phases of the project. “Now it looks easy.”

They then started working on a design to help children with Amniotic Band Syndrome, a condition where children are born without appendages because their circulation is cut off in the womb by amniotic bands.

To spread the device as widely as possible, they made the Robohand an Open Source design available online, and Van As now collects donations to make hands for people around the world.

“I don’t want to make money out of misery,” Van As said, dismissing the idea that he could make a profit on the mechanical hand.

Robohands are different from other prostheses for three simple reasons: “functionality, simplicity and cost,” Van As said.

He started with $10,000 in donations from around the world. “I said I’d do about 100 hands then disappear, but it keeps going,” said Van As. “How do you say no?”

Owen stopped working with Robohands in January to focus on education, “specifically on how to introduce the students of today to 3-D printing,” he said.

At $500, a Robohand is significantly cheaper than the typical $10,000 to $15,000 cost for a conventional below-the-elbow prosthesis, said Eric Neufeld a U.S.-based certified Prosthetist and Orthotist and the director of Range of Motion Project, known as ROMP, which provides prosthetic limbs to those who cannot afford them around the world.

“There are very few options just for digits, so that is another problem they are addressing,” Neufeld said.

“It’s a pioneering thing they are doing. It gets people thinking about what other components can be made in the same way,” he said, adding that he will watch Robohands closely for possible use by his organization.

Eventually, Van As said he’d like to see Robohands kits available for sale at stores, so that anyone could simply build one for themselves. He’s waiting for the design to be patented. Already people from Australia to Newfoundland are volunteering to print Robohands.

“We took the 3-D printing world by surprise,” Van As said. “It wasn’t the first medical breakthrough in the 3-D world, but people are eager to get a hold of it now.”

Van As grins as he holds up a tiny white and blue Robohand in his shop. “This is for a 2 1/2 year old in Australia.” Casts of other arms are strewn about the garage workshop, which is also full of spools of 3-D printing material, machines, experiments and constructions.

Twelve-year old Dylan Laas got his Robohand in March. His mother, Jacqui, said her son, who does not have a right hand because of Amniotic Band Syndrome, is approaching activities with new interest thanks to the gadget.

“It looks cool. It makes me look like Darth Vader … its fun to use,” he said, adding that he can’t wait to go swimming with it.

 

Read more: fox news

Smartwatch Is Next Step In ‘Quantified Self’ Life-Logging

You could call it the phantom menace . Each year, in the midst of winter a rumor surfaces, a about a new Apple product that sets tech bloggers buzzing.

Over the spring and summer, hype builds. Then nothing. Last year, the tech world was left waiting for an Apple TV. This was the year of the iWatch — or at least the year of iWatch hype.

Last week, Samsung rolled out its own version f this imaginary Apple device, and early reviews have been poor. Analysts say the Galaxy Gear, priced at $299, is expensive and the battery life is short. While the watch has voice recognition a la Dick Tracy — the device fell flat with many gadget geeks.

“So the watch itself, if all it is is a glorified smartphone and has some other features to it, it’s not so interesting,” says Brad Feld, a venture capitalist in Boulder, Colo.

What really excites technologists like Feld about watches is how intimate these devices could be. A watch touches your skin, so it can take your pulse, measure your temperature and record the quality of your sleep. Feld says it could become almost like another organ.

“I think we are at version 0.1 of human instrumentation,” he says.

Feld envisions a world of wearable devices — not just watches — that record all kinds of intimate details about our lives. He thinks this data could help make all of us healthier, happier and more fulfilled human beings.

This is the idea of the .quantified self

“When you talk about quantified self, it’s important to acknowledge it’s a social movement first,” says Sarah Rotman Epps, at Forrester Research. “It’s a group of people who identify themselves as being interested in quantifying themselves — in tracking data about their lives.”

Feld is one of them. He’s trying to run a marathon in every state in the country and uses technology to track himself obsessively.

“So I use a bunch of different things,” he says.

He uses a Fitbit, which tracks daily activity and heart rate, and a Fitbit scale to weigh himself. A Garmin watch tracks his runs, and he wears a monitor to track oxidation in his blood. He runs blood tests quarterly and uses devices to track his sleep.

“I instrument myself when I run,” he says.

Most people probably won’t follow Feld to these extremes, but according to Rotman Epps, millions of Americans are already tracking themselves with an app or a device. And Forrester Research found roughly a third of online adults are interested in using a device to track things like sleep. But all this data can be incredibly revealing.

“I choose not to wear my own personal device in bed — whether I am sleeping or doing something else,” Rotman Epps says, laughing. “That’s just where I draw the line.”

In 2011, Fitbit accidentally posted information online about when some of its users were having sex. And sleep patterns can offer telltale signs of depression. By sharing this data with an app or device-maker, Rotman Epps says, you are giving up control.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled more than once that when someone shares information about themselves with a business, the person no longer has any reasonable expectation of privacy. But that hasn’t cooled the fervor of entrepreneurs in this space.

Max Levchin, one of the co-founders of PayPal, recently launched Glow, an app to help women to get pregnant.

“You are opting to put this data in the cloud,” says Rotman Epps.

After interviewing many of these companies on privacy and their plans for the future, she says she has concerns.

“The attitude of these companies is that they will be stewards of your data, but the reality is they don’t even know what their business model is,” she says.

Members of the quantified-self movement have demanded that many firms let users download and delete information, but Rotman Epps is still wary. She says if a company changes its privacy policy there is not much a user could do.

Source BBC news

Modeling hip joint disease using 3D engineering tool

Emma and her mum

Emma and her mum battled to get a diagnosis

When 11-year-old Emma Thornton starts secondary school soon, her mother Theresa says it will be a fresh start for her because no-one will know what she has been through over the past five years.

Problems with Emma’s left hip joint have left her with difficulty walking and a painful, stiff hip which could lead to an early hip replacement when she is older.

For an active, sporty child, Theresa knows it has been tough for her daughter to come to terms with her lack of mobility.

“She found it really hard not being able to take part in playground games with her friends. She couldn’t do PE – and she just had to sit there watching everyone else doing it. As a result, she got angry and frustrated.”

Emma, who lives in north London, has Perthes’ disease, which affects the head of the femur – the ball part of the ball and socket joint of the hip – in children. It normally starts with groin, hip or knee pain and usually affects just one leg.

Typical porous structure of the bone found in the femoral head.

Typical porous structure of the bone found in the femoral head

Bone modelling

Scientists from the University of Hull, funded by Action Medical Research, have begun a research project to try to work out why some children develop it while others do not.

With the help of a three-dimensional computer modelling technique, called finite element analysis, they are investigating how the shape and orientation of the hip joint influences the disease process. Such is the scope of the engineering tool that it has also been used in the design of cars and aircraft.

Prof Michael Fagan, who is leading the team carrying out the research, says the technique has distinct advantages for this kind of medical problem where modelling of bones is required.

“It allows us to visualise the hip joint and pelvis in 3D, then vary the geometry in the model to look at the stresses and strains created on the bones.”

Prof Fagan’s theory is that Perthes’ disease occurs because of a change in the biomechanics of the hip joint.

“The thinking is that as the hip joint grows, loading is high on the joint and that can block blood supply to the femoral head causing the collapse of the bone.”

His research team are using the same techniques to study whether certain activities and exercises, such as horse riding or swimming, might have the potential to stop the progression of the disease.

Limping

At present it is not possible to predict which children will develop Perthes’ disease. By the time they’re diagnosed, their thigh bone can often be already damaged.

In Emma’s case, there were crucial delays before and after diagnosis.

She had been trampolining when her sister found her collapsed and crying on the floor, complaining that she couldn’t stand up.

“I thought she’d just pulled a muscle,” her mum remembers.

“I helped her up again and she was was limping for a few days. A few weeks later, she was still favouring her right leg and then we noticed she’d started turning her foot in.”

X-rays showed that Emma had a larger hip joint gap on her left side, but they were assured it was unlikely to be Perthes’ disease.

But Theresa wasn’t convinced. It was only after she researched Emma’s symptoms on the internet and found out more about Perthes’ that she demanded that Emma’s X-rays be re-examined.

How Perthes’ disease affects the hip joint in children

An MRI scan eventually confirmed a diagnosis of Perthes’ in July 2008 – but then there were further delays.

Salvage procedure’

After surgery to release a tendon in her groin at a local hospital, Emma was advised to wear a hip brace for six weeks but when they finally decided to go and see a specialist at Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, they were told she had missed the window for corrective surgery.

“He could see that she had a severe condition. He said all he could do was carry out a salvage procedure for now,” Theresa says.

Hip joint detail

How Perthes’ disease affects the hip joint in children

Emma has now had surgery to help correct the angle of her hip using temporary metal plates.

Most children are lucky enough to recover from Perthes’ disease naturally without any long-term disability, using a combination of physiotherapy, rest and plaster casts or braces.

Emma’s case may not be quite as simple but she is now coping well and, although she limps, she can run, jump and swim and play football – as long as she doesn’t overdo it.

Starting a new school could be perfect timing and give her a whole new lease of life.