The professor with the bionic legs, or: the cyborg

Hugh Herr, a professor at the MIT Media Lab, who uses bionic legs and designs them himself, showed at the Science in the age of experience conference organized by Dassault Systèmes in Boston, how design merges with biology and will free disabled people from their limitations

Hugh Herr, a professor at the MIT Media Lab is a living example of the integration of technology and biology. He is a disabled person who had both of his legs amputated after a climbing accident when he was 17. Harr was one of the keynote speakers at the Science in the Age of Experience conference held by Dassault Systèmes in the Harvard University Medical School building in Boston.

"Each of the bionic legs has three tiny computers, 12 sensors and a tendon that activates it and allows it to dance, run and do everything. These legs were designed, by the way, using SolidWorks software from Dassault Systèmes", Har said from the conference stage.

"Today I will talk about human planning - a concept that means the fusion of biology and planning. We simplify fundamental principles of biology and apply them to machines. For example, the motor is the equivalent of the foot muscles, there is elastic wiring that simulates the tendon, and there is the computing process, which connects them to the spine. When I walk - the command sent to the motors is very similar to the commands sent from the brain and spinal cord to the peripheral muscles. Thanks to this I am able to move. The legs are just an introduction to the way in which you can replace natural parts of the body that have broken down with synthetic components.

"When I was 17 years old I climbed a cliff and fell. One day I woke up in a very different body and asked what next. I went to the rehabilitation doctor and asked him this question, he asked 'what do you want to do?' I told him - 'I want to drive a car, ride a bike and definitely go back to climbing the mountains'. Without hesitation he said - 'You can drive a car with control using your hands instead of your feet, there is nothing to talk about cycling and certainly mountain climbing'. The doctor was wrong. As soon as my legs were adjusted, I started climbing immediately, and I discovered that I had advantages over other climbers - I could be as tall as I wanted, even three meters, and thus it was easier for me to climb.

"As a young man I began to imagine a future world, where technology advances and eliminates all human limitations. I believe that in the 21st century the disability will end. For this purpose, robotic engineering, artificial intelligence, tissue engineering, material engineering and more must be combined."

"Prosthetic legs have not changed since the Civil War in the USA in 1960. It is amazing that despite all the waves of innovation since then, very little progress has been made in surgical technique. So when unfortunately my legs were amputated, I was fitted with prosthetic legs using Civil War era technology. I feel my legs like a phantom, but I can't move them, I'm stuck in the original way they were installed, I can't move my toe. There was no connection between the prosthesis and my brain.

"At the MIT Media Lab I am developing devices that will help me and my first experimenter, a friend named Steve Martin, who was wounded in Afghanistan. I connected the muscles mechanically to the stump using surgical techniques, and thus it is possible to make the muscles contract and stretch, using biological sensors, which sense the dynamics of the bionic leg and send rich information to the central nervous system. Training is required, in the end the person thinks and the brain moves the artificial organ. We required many studies in different fields.

"I was looking for a volunteer and I found a mountain climber named Jim who fell off a cliff in the Cayman Islands and the rope could not catch him, his leg was broken and it was not possible to reattach it and in the end they had to amputate his leg. It was perfectly timed. At first his movements were clumsy, but eventually he was able to control the robotic ankle. He was able to feel the foot, and then we projected its condition into his nervous system. Then he just insisted on standing, and succeeded. After that, he was even able to go up and down the stairs, when his mechanical foot moved according to the instructions of the brain at the subconscious level."

According to Prof. Har, not only limbs can be restored in this way, but also in cases of damage to the spinal cord. "There are exoskeletons today, which are powered by motors. Our goal is for the exoskeleton to be able to use the muscles in the body like engines, then everything will be inside the skin and nothing will be visible from the outside. My colleague, Bob Wiener, and his colleagues are developing a system that can repair a broken spinal cord through tissue engineering using a polymer scaffold in combination with stem cells. After the treatment, it will be possible to bypass the broken part and give commands to the rest of the body. We can use what I call the digital nervous system: we can wire ourselves and take control of the muscles with the help of advanced control systems by artificially activating or stimulating muscles. The idea is to connect the natural nervous system with the artificial one."

In conclusion, Prof. Har said that "my vision is to create harmony between artificial products and nature". He used the word augmentation - that is, increasing the ability through the combination. It doesn't take much imagination to think of uses for such technologies in the future. "Of course, in order to prevent abuse, we must train not only technologists but also people in the field of ethics and policy, and we will do what society wants us to do," added Prof. Herr. "We will address the end of human pain and suffering in the world, and at the same time we will develop policies and laws to meet deep goals, such as respecting human diversity and individual rights."

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• Simulation from the smallest scale to the entire visible universe - the key to understanding the universe (another lecture from the same conference)
• With tilted arms - researchers were able to enable two amputated hands to operate bionic hands
• Rewired Bionic Limbs / Gary Sticks