Let your C-Legs do the walking
posted Jun 22nd 2005 1:22AM
The C-Leg prosthetic is helping to blur the line between man and machine. The $40,000 lithium-ion (30 hours of juice) powered C-Leg has a "computer chip" in the knee which reads how fast the person is walking and swings the leg (via hydraulics) for them. The knees read the person's gait speed, weight distribution over the leg, and the pitch of the surface at a rate of 50 times a second making constant, automatic adjustments to the legs making stairs, curbs, or hills much easier to plod than with previous devices. And in a trend akin to conspicuously setting your mobile phone on the bar for all to see, amputees are choosing to "polish and decorate" their high-tech limbs, exposing 'em with true tech-geek pride. Young men, especially those who grew up with personal electronics and sci-fi, are most inclined to revel in their new-found cybernetic glory. Hey, and we can't blame them 'cause them kicks be tight!
kinda wants me to go cut off a leg...that is very cool.
Nice pins?
How long until these prosthetics are better than the real thing?
In 20 years we'll be watching the Dow-Corning Dallas Cowboys playing the Proctor-Gamble San Francisco 49ers. If your legs never get tired and allow you to sprint twice as fast everyone will want some.
can't wait for the ipod attachment/addon. also ^^ your a douche.
Wow ik-47, If I could, I would ban your IP
And if I ever lose my legs, Im pickin up these babies.
That's amazing! I don't know how engineers do it. $40k sounds like a lot for a prosthetic, though. How do people who need it pay for it?
Can someone please delete IK-47's comment? That has got to be one of the most retarded comments I have ever read on Engadget.
Not to rain on anyones parade, but these have been available for over 5 years now.
And the price is a lot lower these days, ie the most recent price i heard was 30k AUD.
(btw I have a degree in prosthetics/orthotics so I'm not making stuff up)
I suppose the C-Leg has a built-in C-Walk function for them nights at the club. Snoop Dogg aint got sh*t on these...
What I don't understand is, if you're trying to show off your cool robotic legs, why you'd want to wear shoes. Surely, this expensive device has some space-age grippers or something on the bottom. Please--don't tell me Reebok shoe is better than space-foot.
Soon cybernetics will be so good you'll be tempted to replace what you were born with! I prefer genome 4ax0r1n9 myself (it's my major), but prosthetics *definitely* have some "interesting" possible applications. Given tht we're only about five years, at most, away from gene therapy to regrow damaged body parts, including limbs, you'd be abe to get your legs back if you weren't happy with the man-made replacement. So, it's all good, all-in-all. :-)
(/me prepares to suffer the slings and arrows of Engadget's anti-progress skeptics.)
Dave: ......ROFL good point! =P
Nice advance!. But I dont know why the manufacters are trying all the time to make them so thin like a metallic skelleton legs.
They could try to make a more real leg proportion, with the same mecha style. Like a high-tech armour from Appleseed. I can see in the main character Briareos, the future of prosthetics/orthotics, since he is also a disabled man himself.
Then they will be really cool and proud to wear!.
Do they work for cycling?
It seems odd that the guy had his photo taken on the train tracks when that was the reason he lost his limbs in the first place. I don't know about the rest of you but I would be more than a little gun shy around trains and I certainly wouldn't have my picture taken on the tracks regardless of how many times I checked the train schedule.
The AK's (above-the-knee) have had stuff like this for years. I am a BK. one leg only. I would love to not wear a shoe on the prosthetic, but for two reasons - 1. the other foot will have various shoes on, hard to even the gait. 2. Shoes are cheap, rather wear out shoes than mega-expensive prosthetics.
As to cycling - most AK's use handcycles. BK's can ride.
The picture shows a bilateral (lost both legs) AK. From what I hear, it is crazy hard to walk if you lose both your knees, gizmos or no. One cool part about being bilateral is you can more or less pick your height.
When I lost my leg I was hoping for super powers. At a minimum to be able to tell when it is going to rain, or something. So far all I got is an indifference to small to medium size puddles. Its a bit of a ripoff.
unfortunately, we'll see a lot more development on this due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since our medevac system is so vastly improved, we're saving a lot of people who would have died in previous wars, but that means a new generation of amputees. the good news is that larger demand will drive produt improvements, and lower prices.
Did anyone see that special on discovery (I think) where a two-leg-amputee had a metal "band" for each leg? He could run faster than most people, and these "legs" looked like c-shaped pieces of springsteel. I'd shell out for those. It'd be faster than driving on the 210 freeway, that's for sure.
hi, my name is mark. i am a 2x knee disartic (amputated through knee, each femur is intact) since a drunk driver caught me between cars taking cables off back on 7/31/92.
why lighter and skeleton like?.... well your body image has incorporated the weight of your leg, thus you usually do not feel it. since my amputations, it seems that prosthetics are additional weight to the revised body image, and so they feel like extra weight.
ever have your boots caked w/ mud to point of them feeling noticably heavy? (then you are getting close to the way my pins feel when i wear them) ANY reduction in weight is to the better.
choosing height....the shorter the 'legs' the easier to walk.
afford them?....i am lucky that my former employer's off payroll package included insurance...coverage on prosthetics and w/c related were unlimited, and while someone in india may have what was a good job for me, at least i know they treated me just like any other 'able-bodied' employee.
thank you att.
i am 18 years old. i just got a c leg because of osteosarcoma. I love it. little kids call me bionic woman. my senior kinda sucked, but it wasnt horrible
Katie E--->one of my close friends had osteosarcoma and may lose control over his legs. what exactly happened with you if you dont mind me asking? Or if you would prefer talking through emails that would be perfectly fine.