prostheses
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Powered prosthetics turn mundane tasks into monumental feats
Lukas Kalemba was walking home with some friends after a night of partying and drinking in Dortmund, Germany, in 2003. While crossing a bridge along the way, he stopped to rest but lost his balance and fell over. In an attempt to break his fall, he instinctively reached out and grabbed a wire that stretched across. It kept him from falling 20 feet to the ground immediately but the wire sent a high-voltage current through the left side of his body, causing irreparable damage to his leg. Kalemba became an above-the-knee amputee when he was 19 years old. He was in an induced coma for three weeks until the doctors brought the pain down to a manageable level. "The first time I noticed it was in the hospital when I stood up at night to go to the toilet," he says. "I wanted to stand on my left foot [but] I crashed on the floor."
Antler-inspired prosthetic merges with your bone to feel like a real limb
Someday, robotic prostheses and exoskeletons might be so commonplace that amputees will no longer have to use something that resembles a suction cup on a stick. In the interim, though, there's ITAP. The technology, which stands for intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthesis, is a type of prosthetic that plugs right into an amputee's bone. This allows them to actually feel that artificial limb and walk like they normally would with two healthy legs, and it also prevents chafing and skin issues common among those who use prostheses. For ITAP to organically merge with one's bones, its creators from the University of London and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital drew inspiration from deer antlers. Like antlers, the metal part sticking into the bone is porous, inviting soft tissue to invade it and seal any surface or opening that could be infected by bacteria.
