Becoming Bionic With Robotics | Invented In The West Country | Spark

I've lived almost my entire life without a left hand as a Paralympic swimmer I rarely used a false one but now I want to explore the world of prosthetics while this is incredible from the pioneering cobbler whose genius stunned the medical world he is the equivalent today of some of the most advanced companies working on prosthetics the army Colonel whose passion for photography led an x-ray revolution you could see inside the body would see the individual bones the reaction was almost one of total astonishment and the bedroom inventor making groundbreaking bionics ultimately we want to make a bionic hand that really accurately mimics the movements of a human hand biotech inventors past and present are transforming lives for millions of disabled people [Music] one question I always get asked by young people is if you could go back and get your left hand back would you and I would always say no because I believe it is made me the person I am today I'm much stronger resilient and probably more successful person as a result of it I'm a former Paralympic swimmer for Great Britain but when I was four I actually hated swimming I had this real fear of deep water I didn't flow I just remember pretty much sinking to the bottom of the pool I did eventually get the hang of it over a ten-year swimming career I picked up silver and bronze at the World Championships in 2009 I still swim and today I'm back in bath at the pool where I trained [Applause] riding out the length day after day one of their Kate gray cape and the prospect up more when I'm not in the pool I'm in front of the camera as a sports reporter yes she can expect another busy day here in Rio as Dame Sarah story hopes to finish these games the way she started going for us and I've taken up road cycling with plans for a long distance challenge later this year I'm hoping to do it fitted with a brand new hand to replace the one I lost when I was 2 years old [Music] I'm heading to the University of the West of England the campus is home to Europe's biggest robotics Research Center and a hub for tech innovators this revolutionary bionic hand is made from plastic using a 3d printer Daniel Melville is the hands chief tester growing up I had a lot of the folks sound of prosthetic as I call them and unfortunately didn't really do anything for me and maybe in my own eyes it made me feel more disabled because they were so chunky and people could tell straight away it was a prosthetic and I stopped getting them after years I only really ever got them so I could have time law school but this when I'm wearing this one people don't come out and go what haven't your hand they're more like whoa this can't be real well I'm quite blown away by just a look of it but can you just show us some of the movements and what it can do I have actually been testing other arms since the very beginning but this one is my favorite one so this is me opening and closing it so yeah people would come up to me okay well this is incredible Dan's prosthetic is modeled on the lead character of the massively popular game Deus Ex when we met obviously I haven't got a left hand you have a gun a right hand so kind of shaking hands was quite difficult but with this guess it solved your problem because everyone goes in for a right hand shake don't they say itself that straight away that's amazing it's like the simplest thing when you meet someone the last thing you want is that awkward laugh oh gosh sorry I was always that guy that cuz I was left Hannah's like oh hello or I go sorry I'm a hugger not a shaker so I just give him a hug but yeah wearing this it's a really positive feeling for me so not only am i shaking their hand but I'm giving them a handshake from an arm from a key video game which is pretty incredible it's a world away from the basic electric arm I used to have bands awesome Bionic hand at first started life in the bedroom of inventor Joel Gilbert the new things about this are that the fingers are independently actuated yeah which is it's probably different from the one that you would have tried a mine was just a complete unit moving together yeah the way that Dan operates it is that there are sensors electro Maya graphical sentience yeah where you flex your muscles to activate as an electronic signal that controls the hand the control system supposed to be as intuitive as possible really easy to use open bionics was launched in 2014 by Joel and co-founder Samantha Payne the company has won a whole host of awards for his innovative highly stylized and individual prosthetics the arms are all bespoke the part of the design that's individual to the user is mainly the component that makes it fit properly to them so the mechanics the electronics there are the same each time yeah the aesthetic cover over the top they can choose what they want so you can take it off and change for a different design in the future if you decide that you want maybe you have one design for day to day going to work and then another one when you want to go out Joel and his colleagues are making their designs open-source freely available for others to adapt and modify so what we want to do is try and advance this technology as quickly as possible and as broadly as possible and we feel like this is a really good way to do it and engage lots of different academic minds from all over the world and it's all about being affordable as well isn't it we use 3d printing for the manufacture so that's one of the really big things to improve the cost is you have one tool that can make anything ultimately we want to make a bionic hand that really accurately mimics the movements of a human hand so we want to take it to that technological level I'm blown away by Daniels 3d printed hand at 3,000 pounds it's quite incredible [Music] perhaps these guys could make one for me [Music] I'm a country girl brought up with my sisters on the family farm near Bristol I was always an inquisitive child messing with things like shouldn't the shiny machine in my granny's kitchen certainly looked like a fun toy to play with I was two years old and I managed to put my left hand into a working sausage machine and my hand got cut off I don't remember it to be particularly painful I don't remember seeing blood or anything around I just remember it being a moment where something was going wrong and I couldn't do anything about it and something long-term and it happened and for mum and dad the memory of that day is still raw how all unfolded I think it was Hannah's first weakest I know the day it was October the 9th and your moment just found out on the morning that she was expecting many as well I think my main worry was that Hannah had to be picked up from the school at half past three and I can remember it was three o'clock those days before mobile phones I was out on the farm I could just hear you calling not really screaming but that's all there was something wrong but so for myself coming into the situation and seeing um in mum's arms and just saying I've lost my hand they let me just looking at them it was that was that was a great shock for me because all of a sudden you think about actually there's no turning back on that I can remember we need to get the hand into some ice we need to freeze it and at that point your granny went out and got a bag of peas and I think we got the hand out of the machine to my surprise you were just no tears you just were very calming you said I've lost my hand and we're going to get hospital and get it mended they couldn't save my hand so I learned to adapt and do things differently to my sisters and friends [Music] it was a pain having a clammy prosthetic hand fitted over my stump but I coped because that's what you do when you're a kid I use my prosthetic hand in the early years being able to do all those little things that you want to do at school and at playgroup but as I moved into secondary school I was starting to take part in in more sport and the prosthetic hand that I had they were almost dangerous because it's the way I'm running around they would almost start falling off and hitting people and they weren't sport friendly it wasn't something I was dependent on anymore and that's where I guess the full-time use of my prosthetic came to an end [Music] early artificial limbs were basic and uncomfortable achieving a perfect fit is the holy grail of prosthetics the first man to find it a cobbler from chard James Gillingham was an ordinary shoemaker and he put his craftsmanship to good use and created this leather limb which is just incredible because this was back in 1866 so he was way ahead of his time in the mid-1800s chard in Somerset was a thriving herb of entrepreneurs philanthropists and inventors it was here that Gillingham's creative genius first stunned the medical world hi Kate nice to meet you I'm Amanda prune welcome to chop Museum I'd like to take you into the barn to show you the Gillingham exhibition that we have in particular this is where we have the prosthetic limbs so this has been created by James Gillingham the story really started in 1863 when the Prince of Wales was being married and towns across the country were celebrating as you can imagine and there were fireworks and they were cannon being fired and in chardee had a gentleman who was a groundskeeper up at crickets and Thomas will singleton he was priming a cannon very unfortunately the cannon backfired and the rod caught his arm and he actually had to have the whole of his arm amputated his employer was desperate to try and see what they could do they scoured the countryside and they couldn't find anyone to help him at the time prosthetics were still incredibly basic ordinary working men like Bill singleton had to make do with a wooden peg leg or an arm with a hook a few years later he just happened to be going into James Gillingham shop the golden boot and child now what James did and we can show you on this one here because he was a boot maker he had a special technique where he would soften the leather first by molding it with that he also accommodated things like straps and not only would it fit properly it would then be very supportive on the on the person's body and what's incredible is that he'd picked up straight away James Gillingham that the fit was so important for will it was an absolute success he was then able to lift weights of up to 700 pounds he was able to wheel a barrow he was able to work with spades and with forks and of course it meant he could keep his livelihood as well [Music] Gillingham's prosthetic arm four wheels singleton was so successful that other patients came from across the country this is an example of some of his other work isn't it so this is the artificial legs that he used to create as word spread about the work that he was doing he was then called upon to do more different kinds of prosthetic limbs the shoemaker from charge was a keen amateur photographer these extraordinary staged photographs showcase his skills as a master craftsman and surgical mechanist [Music] Gillingham's detailed studies of almost every patient appeared in The Lancet and other leading medical journals sometimes there's a feeling what has been historically with medicine that medicine is something that's done to you but in certain respects as we advanced in medicine it's something that's done with you and what we have here is a man that understands that from his work he is the equivalent today of some of the most advanced companies working on prosthetics Gillingham was summoned to the War Office who invited him to make prosthetic limbs for injured British servicemen returning home from war if you were a war veteran today if he was someone who had had an amputation if you're someone who was born with a particular medical need we would always think about that as something that we have to do bespoke and Gillingham is the man who created a sense of entrepreneurship innovation and bespoke [Music] Gillingham's reputation as a self-styled Surgical mechanist continued to grow a stream of patients would arrive at Prospect House just off chards High Street to be fitted with their bespoke leather limbs by Gillingham and his team the current owner is John King this is the workshop this is where I used to make all of the limbs to in here all of you staff 10 employees in here well used to be a big shaft running through the top there on all the machinery and they wouldn't want any of this machine you've got got here with no ammo so it was just like an anvil or snips and hammers just address it all around this original bench there still Wow and Gillingham would store his patients prosthetic limbs in the cellar because he's father down here and there was limbs have all around the place then all the prosthetic limbs and everything how many do you think there were must have been a 50 or 60 at least Wow what made you want to come down what was the kurios supposed to be nosy that's young boys do look around and had a good look and we didn't hang around down here for too long we scurried back up because it was a bit spooky by 1910 the records show Gillingham have provided prosthetics for 15,000 people so I'm intrigued by this this is the price list for what Gillingham offered yes that's right yeah and such a variation I really just closed arms and legs but clearly there's so much to it is for hip instruments and and back assurance it wasn't just for amputees no and and that's what you can see from his work he did actually think of everything that the person may well have needed now there is one thing on here that really caught my attention and that's the scrotum trust the Gillingham scrotum trust he was so proud of it you put his name to it what might that be I'm afraid I really don't know we could we could make lots of different guesses about it but I don't know do you think it's where maybe the modern-day box might have come from a bit of protection in that that area it may well be I don't think we have any here in the museum though after James Gillingham's death in 1924 the business went into slow decline the very sad things was that as more and more people needed them especially after the Second World War what we saw was prosthetic limbs started to be built and mass-produced in the likes of America because of course they could do the much cheaper so all of this work that went into making them bespoke and very special for people was lost Gillingham of chard finally closed in the 1960s these are x-ray images of my left arm stump and it's x-rays that first brought another child inventor and pioneer to national prominence straight after the accident they weren't sure if I'd lost my wrist or if I'd lost my forearm or how it was going to grow I'd actually cut out the growth plates of my my left hand and that is massively affected the prosthetics that I use because my left arm has never grown any longer and it was thanks to x-rays that revealed that x-ray pioneer James Gifford was an Army colonel an owner of a prosperous lace mill incredibly he was a contemporary and near neighbor of James Gillingham from his photographic studio and laboratory at Oakland's Giffords first x-ray images astounded the medical world he was a I suppose you call him a man of means he had a private laboratory and he could develop his interests interest particularly in x-rays came out of photography but he starts out doing has been very interested in lenses and of course lenses are the key to 20th century x-ray technology we can start to look inside the human body in the most fascinating ways you had to be good a photographer to do the early x-ray work and in fact x-rays were called the new photography this remarkable image of a woman's hand most likely Giffords wife was among the very first to be seen in Britain the technology at the time of Gifford was essentially the same as the technology in the end towards the end the 1960s in other words x-rays work because they have an x-ray tube which produces x-rays these go through the patient the produces an image on a screen in January 1896 he staged the first public demonstration of the new x-ray technology at the Royal Photographic Society in London the reaction was almost one of total astonishment the operators are not very powerful but but it's really very exciting images you could see inside the body you could see the individual bones you could see the joints prior to that to look inside the body was really very difficult it's really how far you could reach with a finger you know you only really saw bones in the body before either on the battlefield or in the graveyard the operating theatre and there was a certain sense of the macabre about this with his x-rays Gifford led a medical revolution that continues to this day the science of radiography now covers the very latest fluoroscopy CT and MRI scanning technologies now x-rays can really show a huge amount of detail if someone now say has abdominal pain they will end up having an ultrasound or CT scan we can have a modern and minimally invasive treatment only because you have non-invasive diagnosis you know today if anyone's ever had an MRI scan it is extraordinary what you can actually see inside yourself so this is the beginning of a of a visual journey right across the 20th century and this person James given so much part of that story James Gifford never lost his love of science and invention he was still doing x-ray work for local doctors in charge until a few weeks before his death in 1930 [Music] lunging waist-deep d-day 1944 World War two is at a critical moment for seven-year-old cloade Whedon of Somerset it was the day she received her first prosthetic leg at Queen Mary's Hospital Roehampton on the outskirts of London in Roehampton they had quite a big limb fitting center because the chaps were coming back from DJ and everything and I loved it as a little girl because I was spoiled by tomorrow and I saw mrs. Churchill gave her a bouquet she said please walk for me and I walked for it but no it was it was lovely there you respond Claudia's wartime leg wasn't a bespoke gillingham leather limb but a mass-produced 170 years on and several legs later she still has a problem with the fit this is your mouse yes in recent Maggie's well you see now I just pushed my leg in I've got socks on like you know to push it in but in the old days you see you have that and then I had a strap come up there you know to tie it up and it would make you quite sore because you know that would hurt sometimes and then a strap around that was the early days well I feel pleased now this one yeah it's very nice it's very lifelike isn't it yeah all right this is a few it to take that when I'll show you show you mine so this is obviously the prosthetic very similar in your kind of the socket and the look of it they don't do freckles though unfortunately so much my no no you never know I could always ask but it's quite amazing when you look back at the pictures of Gillingham and then to this but you must have so heavily influenced that idea of it but now they do own it ones don't they yeah no I never at 17 I don't know if you felt that or I got a little bit stressed at a younger age didn't think anyone want to marry me do you that's exactly how I felt actually yeah I always thought they wouldn't like me because I was a bit different I know and there's a plenty of other people that love Ellen and thing if it is I used to think well how could anybody help me if I get into bed and put me leg off yeah you know things like that the wife and it does help you filter through the rubbish yeah yeah when you get married or not what one day hopefully you're as bad as my grandma she keeps telling him where's the room [Music] at home my boyfriend Chris likes to see himself as a modern-day innovator very much in the spirit of Gillingham and Gifford hi all righty just finishing off the tape on your on your bike say almost done for you to use it I've started picking up other sports again I've really started to enjoy my cycling and I'm going on a ride from London to Paris and I've realized I do need my prosthetic hand to help me nice and smooth on there I think that should be able to grip on there quite nicely because that's all sorted now if you turn on the adaptions what we've actually done we've got it now so when you break both the front and the rear brake come on thanks this little shifty gadget here so both the cables into one bring out too bright and usually change put your own gear at the front all of my control was is now I've always cycled with with only one set of brakes and once ideas of an eye yeah was cuz I originally thought pretty better with a mountain bike setup with a flat bar yeah obviously you're a bit vain and wanted to look cool on the road bike so let's get the road bike handle worse it's amazing thanks very much good job [Music] I need to start using a more advanced prosthetic hand I'd really like to investigate what is now available to me and when I look around and I see all these amazing technological developments in prosthetics I think am I missing out [Music] it's been more than a decade since my last NHS prosthetics appointment today I'm meeting my new consultant so what's on offer for a sporty types I've got lots of different challenges in mind that I'd love to do some cycling from London to Paris suddenly not having a left hand it's become a bit of an issue so I've been using this one so this used to have a government incident you still look like one of these I adapted it slightly so I've got like drilled some holes in it it was getting a bit sweaty took the heavy parts out and so now it should just sits on my bike obviously we never advice for people to adapt it or an armed respect the factors that you manage to get yeah which is great we've got this adoption here and and this is purely for forbade rating this one the important thing with with Bay trading is that you have to be able to have a secure fit yeah we always have got to get them all easy as we're always so so that is one option really am the other option would be something like this as well so that's more for a road bike where you have this apparently attached to the handlebar yeah this is on your arm you can then use that for a pushin pill there with that as well and because math considerations is that come into at all for you I'm all about the efficiency efficiency yeah if it does the job that I need to do I'm not too worried how lifelike it looks my disability is it's got me to where I am and I don't really want to hide that [Music] I think it's become cool so I have a prosthetic I have got many friends who have got missing legs and they consciously wear shorts people look at them in all that guy's is taking on the world and it's got some amazing things to help him do it the world of prosthetics is advancing beyond all recognition [Music] with job Govardhan his team leading the charge for the first time they'll be working with children on a groundbreaking trial in partnership with the NHS so these Bionic hands have never been made for kids as young as ten years old before so with this trial we're collecting data on how well it works what they think of it how they respond to the cool designs and with what's really a piece of wearable technology I'm keen to get involved with testing their Bionic hands Joel set to work with a 3d scan of my arm so I just need to move around all dimensions next time you come down we'll make a little socket just see obvious within seconds we have a result that take if we just want to print something to see how well it fits we can probably do it in an hour of design time Gifford and Gillingham would have been astounded at what Joel can achieve using a mobile phone and a 3d printer geek chic for a mass-market you can find out more about this and other inventions from across the UK at BBC co uk to Ma ROS world [Music] I've been moved and inspired by what I've seen and I'm excited to share what I've discovered with my family the West as a as an area has become quite a center of prosthetics and development so this guy that I met he's got this like black style prosthetic which has got all of that love the resource skin and it opens full hand and closes again so he says it changes people's because when they come over they're like oh my God look at your and that's amazing tell me about it today's biotech innovations our massive debt to the past Gillingham Gifford and gibbered a hundred and fifty years between them but a shared goal we would never be where we are today if it wasn't thanks to inventors and creators back then that had the the vision and the desire to help people because that's what it's all about [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 9,823

Rating: 4.8983049 out of 5

Keywords: Spark, Science, Technology, education, documentary, factual, building, full documentary, full, bbc documentary, Science documentary, robotics, robotics channel, robots, robot, bionics, artificial intelligence, boston dynamics, boston dynamics parkour robot, disabilty, paralympics, paralympics swimming, swimming, paralympic, paralympic games, deus ex, deus, deus ex mankind divided

Id: QEFuRHFXd-o

Length: 28min 39sec (1719 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2019