“These are the deus ex panels which you
can see look really nice. With this arm, I'm able to open and close
as you can see, tense my muscles, there you go, I can change the thumb, and then if I
press the middle button it flashes. I love it because everyone's so distracted
by the arm, opening and closing it that AHHHH that's mad and I love the reactions.” “Open Bionics is a Bristol based startup
and our mission is to create and democratize technology that enhances the human body, so
in other words, we turn disabilities into super powers. The Hero Arm is our first bionic product,
it's the first medically certified, 3D printed bionic hand and it's also the most affordable
bionic hand available. We've got a multi grip hand with four motors
inside controlling individual fingers and moving the thumb. The Hero Arm works by picking up signals from
a user's muscles, it has sensors on the inside of the socket and they sit on top of the muscles
and detect a small voltage when the muscles are flexed and the hand will move in response.” “I didn't think this kind of technology
could be possible, especially low-cost. it's just crazy, especially what I can do
with the arm compared to what I could do with it three years ago. But even back then, that was still mad.” “The first thing that happens is a prosthetist
will get a model of their arm, which could be physical or digital from a 3D scan. We feed that into our software algorithms
to create the bespoke Hero Arm for that individual person and we then export the files for the
3D printers, 3D print them and then we assemble everything together into that person's Hero
Arm. We've been continually testing with people
from the very beginning, and getting feedback on things like how long can they wear it...do
they experience any discomfort at any time or um how can we design the the socket and
the liner to fit to feel really comfortable on their skin.” “Essentially it's just gotten better because
first it was like oh yeah it just needs to open and close, but actually, being able to
pick up more extra items, or even picking up something heavy. Holding a tray, opening a door, opening a
bottle of water is a major thing. “One of the really cool things about the
design of the Hero Arm is that it has adjustability built into the socket, so it can cope with
maybe a little bit more growth than usual. And that means that as a child grows, their
prosthesis can grow with them.” “I used to have quite a couple of prosthesis
that didn't really do much they just sort of stale really in a sense. It didn't do anything for me, it made me stick
out and I did not like them. I think I just got them because I thought
that was the normal thing to do.” “That's one of the things that we're most
proud of is the the fact that you can change the look and style of it, we've got a customizer
so you can design them yourself, change the colors, it's an expression of individuality
and it means that you have choice over the way that your prosthesis looks. We much prefer the kind of prostheses that
we're making which don't pretend to look like a human limb, and they're saying you're unique,
you're different and that's brilliant, you should celebrate that. Same way like the glasses I'm wearing today,
I wouldn't wear skin colored glasses frames that try and look like eyes, it's totally
ridiculous to even consider that.” “People's eyes light up and it's just nice
to have questions like how does this arm work as opposed to what happened to you kind of
thing.” “We've done lots of open source work. By releasing those design files, giving people
those tools, we'll be able to ultimately integrate some of those really cool new technologies
back into our products in the future. We've seen some incredible projects from researchers
at different universities. There was a researcher that worked with a
upper limb different musician, he was able to independently control each finger to play
the piano and that was using one of our hands. It shows that these technologies that get
talked about a lot in the media and get hyped up, they can actually be translated into something
that people can genuinely get and use.” “Seeing these kids Tilly and Cameron wearing
these arms really warms my heart because as a kid, I dreamt of something like that and
now it's reality, it's just overwhelming in a way because I just can't believe I'm part
of it.”
What does it mean to grow with you ?
That’s fucking cool