Who Needs (Biological) Legs?

Who needs biological limbs when bionic limbs can be so much better?

It seems like yesterday when Aimee Mullins blew me away when she asked this question in a TED talk. But it was actually five years ago. At the time, she characterized her prosthetic legs as an asset - who else got to choose when they wanted to be 6'1" rather than 5'8"? I bumped into her in the elevator yesterday, and she exudes the same ebullience in person that she displays on stage. In her TED All Stars talk today, Mullins lamented that we humans spend more time reporting actualities than imagining what could be better. Her advice "Spend more time daydreaming, because daydreaming is the bridge between imagining and achieving". Lovely.

Someone who's bridging that gap between imagining and achieving is Hugh Herr, director of the Biomechatronics research group at MIT's media lab, both studies and lives the life of an amputee after losing his legs to frostbite after a climbing accident. He shares Mullins' opinion, as he's returned to climbing with some very special advantages: narrow prosthetic feet that let him use narrower crevices as footholds, prosthetic feet with ice cleats built-in, and the flexibility to extend his height, enabling to use handholds beyond his reach in the past. Because of his work at the Media Labs, he's called the Leader of the Bionic Age.

MIT Media Lab has studied interfaces throughout its history. But nowhere could interfaces be more important than when working to integrate bionic limbs with the human body.  Herr's work innovates interfaces on three fronts: mechanical, dynamic and electrical.

For the mechanical interface, Herr uses precise measurements and exact mathematical modelling of both the surface and internal structure of the body, so that bionic limbs fit exactly for unprecedented comfort.

The dynamic interface is even more interesting with special attention to making bionic knees and ankles react more dynamically. We saw the results of licking this problem in a video that compared someone walking clumsily upstairs with static prostheses, compared to the agility achieved with dynamically adaptive bionic limbs.

The last frontier is the electrical interface which will allow people to 'think' their bionic limbs into action.

Basically, Herr believes that humans need never be 'broken', because we can fix these physical disabilities through the merger of technology and human potential. He was joined on stage by Adrianne Haslett-Davis, who lost a leg in the Boston Marathon bombing. Adrianne was a keen ballroom dancer, and the MIT team went to work designing a specialized bionic limb for dancing. Her dance demonstration left her overcome with emotion, along with the audience.

The TED blog has posted a fascinating interview with Herr, if you want to read more. The piece is entitled "You've given me my body back". I think Adrianne got back more than her body. At West Park Healthcare Centre in Toronto where I sit on the board, we phrase it even more powerfully: "You've given me my life back".

TED 2014 Day Two

A totally packed day at TED. I'm brain-sozzled.

Two great Main Theatre sessions, including a surprise 'appearance' by the highly articulate Edward Snowden through a telepresence robot. That interview is already up on TED.com and worth watching.  So what do TEDsters think of Snowden - reckless traitor, or patriotic hero? Given that stark choice, most were undecided (or at least didn't put their hands  up), but of those who voted, it was a landslide for hero. 

Two fast-paced session of 10 All Stars - favourite TED speakers from past years invited back to update their work -  that was like being at the end of a fire hose. A compelling talk by TED Prize winner Charmian Gooch. A spectacular performance by Sting. Then, a small dinner with Robert Fuller, biologist and creator of bio-inspired robots and an ebullient dinner companion. 

Yesterday, I sat  next to my hero Nancy Duarte (speaker coach for many TED speakers, proponent of story-telling as the backbone of talks, and recognized as the creator of Gore's Inconvenient Truth slide show). I already learned a lot from her and learned more yesterday. Tonight, I came up the elevator with Aimee Mullins, a speaker who blew me away when I first heard her at TED years ago. She remains on the top ten favourite posts on this blog. I wish the elevator ride had been a lot longer! 

Detailed descriptions of various talks will follow, as there was just too much going on today, and I'm still recovering from the sleep I lost over the US Airways fiasco.  (Did I mention you should never fly with them?)

Super Legs

Over two years ago, I wrote a post about two extraordinary women who spoke at TED.  These women were living without limbs.  Of the two, Aimee Mullins made the biggest impression on me: she was not just tolerating her prosthetic legs, but reveling in them.  There are some great pictures in that post if you want to revisit it here.  Among them is a picture of Mullins showing off her 'Cheetah legs';  she raves about the running power they give her. 

Now I've just happened across an article on Singularity Hub about Oscar Pistorius, known as the 'fastest man on no legs'.  He had the same problem as Mullin, having been born with congenital absence of fibulae and having amputations below the knee in both legs at an early age.  And now Pistorius, also known as the Blade Runner, has qualified for the London 2012 Olympics on the South African team, running with Cheetah Flex-Foot, as shown below.  

Oscar Pistorius

In my original post, I posed the question of whether disabled athletes, empowered by prosthetics such as the Cheetah Flex-Foot, would eventually be considered to hold an unfair advantage over their two-legged competitors. 

Cheetah Flex Foot

The Cheetah Flex-Foot carbon fibre devices by Ossur of Iceland are designed to absorb shock and transfer energy into forward momentum.  That sounds on the surface like a considerable advantage and has sparked considerable controversy, but then, on second thought, that's exactly what feet do for us.  So, is it just a matter of degree?  Where does a double amputee athlete stop suffering a disability and start enjoying a competitive edge?

Pistorius was originally banned from competing in the 2008 Olympics on the grounds that he had an unfair advantage, a decision later reversed.  But he failed to make the time requirement to join the South African team, so that was a moot point.  This time, he has a favourable ruling from the Olympic committee and he's made the necessary time cut-off.  So he's off to London next year.  If you think that Pistorius is not a true athlete, just a guy trying to take advantage of these fabulous prosthetics in the one sport where they pay off, think again.  Pistorius participated in athletics all through high school, at the provincial level in water polo and tennis, as well as in wrestling and rugby union (ouch).

I sit on the board of West Park Healthcare Centre in Toronto, a preeminent rehabilitation and complex continuing care hospital (this post talks about one of West Park's innovative programs).  I get so excited about what we'll be able to do in the future through the use of powerful prosthetics and movement-assisting robots (see the post about the TED talk about exo-skeletal robot enabling a paraplegic to walk). 

But what if you're an athlete targeting the 2020 Olympics and you start to imagine what such prosthetics could be like by then?  Would you start to feel it was unfair?  Will some determined but misguided athlete in the future voluntarily undergo amputation so s/he can enjoy such prosthetics?  Science fiction certainly foresees such possibilities.

What do you think?  Should Pistorius be allowed to compete?  Or is this acceptance just a slippery slope to the time when Olympic winners will all have such prostheses? 

Legs - or Super Legs? Two Extraordinary Women

My first TED post this year was about Juan Enriquez' presentation. He talked about advances in tissue generation and advanced robotics that could revolutionize how we think of our bodies. How would we handle a world where these devices would enable people to become 'better than human' he asked.

Then I attended a TED University talk by Aimee Mullins, a beautiful athlete, actress, and fashion model. She strutted on stage, all 6'1" of her, wearing very high heels. After a double take, I realized both her legs were prosthetics (she had amputations below the knee when she was one, due to missing fibula bones.)

Aimee showed us some of her favourite legs, including the legs with which she won paralympic medals in long jump and sprints.


These days she thinks of legs as wearable art, rather than mere imitations of human legs. She had 'cheetah legs' for a movie in which she played a cheetah. But my favourites were a beautifully carved ashwood pair built for a fashion show. They looked like finely tooled leather boots.

Aimee said she liked the legs she was wearing, because her normal height was 5'8", but it was fun to be 6'1". When a girlfriend first saw these legs, she had protested "That's just not fair!". What a milestone, she said, that someone with two legs would envy her.

Will such devices turn the tables so that we think of people with disabilities as being advantaged?

We met another extraordinary woman at TED, on the main stage - Lena Maria Klingvall. Born with no arms and one stunted leg, she was another incredibly self-confident, multi-faceted person. A swimming medallist in butterfly and the back stroke. A singer, a pop star in Japan. She can drive a car. She can do calligraphy. She can knit and crochet. She can eat with chopsticks.

Lena Maria attributes her success to great parents and her own positive and stubborn personality. I think her touch of exhibitionism is handy too!

These were two very inspirational women.