The TED community has been very busy over the past few weeks. Below, some newsy highlights.
A major upgrade for prosthetics. After nearly a decade in development, Dean Kamen’s prosthetic arm is finally nearing its commercial launch two years after its approval by the FDA. Developed for wounded soldiers at the behest of the United States Department of Defense, the LUKE arm (named for Luke Skywalker’s own prosthetic) is a major advancement for a device that has remained more or less unchanged since the Civil War. Using electrodes, LUKE picks up electrical signals from the user’s muscles, making it much more intuitive than traditional prosthetics, and it also offers wearers greater strength, dexterity, and flexibility. While the commercial launch is set for late 2016 through Mobius Bionics, a medical device company focused on advanced bionics, the cost has not yet been announced. (Watch Dean’s TED Talk)
An underground haven. Seven years ago, over copious amounts of wine, Dan Barasch and James Ramsey hatched an unheard-of plan: an underground park. Nicknamed the Lowline after sister greenspace the Highline–a name that eventually stuck–the park planned to repurpose a deserted trolley terminal and serve as a place of respite and greenery in the heart of one of New York City’s busiest neighborhoods. While the idea captured the imagination (and donations) of the public, with visitors flocking to a proof-of-concept exhibit, the project had not received official approval from the city — until now. On July 14, the city provisionally approved use of the space, requiring that the project raise a cool $10 million and submit plans within the next 12 months. (Watch Dan’s TED Talk)
Service for trust. “It is clear to me that you don’t have to wear a military uniform to serve your country,” writes Stanley McChrystal, chair of the Service Year Alliance and former commander of US and international forces in Afghanistan, in The Atlantic. McChrystal proposes that service may be at the heart of restoring trust in a country where it has reached its lowest levels in generations. At a time when “tensions and violence in cities across America are reminders of how quickly communities can erupt with an absence of social trust,” he believes that a service year would help reestablish political and civic responsibility while bringing together Americans of all backgrounds to learn to work together as a team. (Watch Stanley’s TED Talk)
A multidisciplinary search for extraterrestrial life. Nathalie Cabrol, director of the Carl Sagan Center for Research at the SETI Institute, proposed a broader approach to the search for extraterrestrial life in a paper published in Astrobiology on July 7. “To find ET, we must open our minds beyond a deeply rooted, Earth-centric perspective, expand our research methods and deploy new tools,” she writes. To push us beyond our anthropocentric vision of extraterrestrial life, she promotes the establishment of a Virtual Institute that will engage the global scientific community. SETI will be exploring resources for the Virtual Institute over the coming months. (Watch Nathalie’s TED Talk)
Women helping women. Sheryl Sandberg’s talk at TEDWomen 2011 launched the Lean In movement, and her latest initiative takes that original vision a step further. Together Women Can encourages women to help each other succeed by mentoring and becoming allies with their female colleagues, a mission that runs contrary to popular myth but perhaps not reality. In an op-ed for The New York Times, coauthored by fellow TED speaker Adam Grant, Sandberg takes on the myth of the catty woman. (Watch Sheryl’s and Adam’s TED Talks)
Go ahead, take a break. It’s easy to feel guilty about taking a vacation, but it’s much more than a luxury or indulgence, it’s a necessity. In the Harvard Business Review, Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan make the data-driven case for taking a vacation using their own research and results from a new study by Project: Time Off. Take note: the duo found that if you plan ahead, create social connections on the trip, go far from your place of work, and feel safe, “94% of vacations have a good ROI in terms of your energy and outlook upon returning to work.” (Watch Shawn’s TED Talk)
The flip side of art. Vik Muniz’s latest exhibition takes a look at a hidden side of famous artworks: their backs. Over 15 years and with a team of specialists by his side, Muniz has traveled widely to photograph the backsides of masterworks and carefully re-create them. “The back of the painting is a bit like the artist’s studio,” he says, “It’s a little dirty, it’s a little bit deceiving, but it also gives you a sense of intimacy.” (Watch Vik’s TED Talk)
Snapchat for women’s education. As the latest guest on The Late Late Show’s Carpool Karaoke sketch, Michelle Obama and host James Corden talk about her Let Girls Learn initiative in between raucous bouts of singing to Stevie Wonder, Beyoncé, and Missy Elliott. Let Girls Learn is focused on helping the 62 million girls around the world who are not in school for a variety of reasons surmount physical, cultural and financial barriers to receive an education. On the show, the First Lady announced her upcoming trip to Liberia, Morocco and Spain for the initiative, inviting viewers to follow along on her recently created Snapchat account. (Watch Michelle’s TED Talk)
An agile new drone. Raffaello D’Andrea mesmerized crowds at TED2016 with a live demo of drones circling the audience in a dazzling light show. On July 22, his team released a demo on Youtube for their IDSC tail-sitter. Combining efficient forward flight with hover capabilities, the IDSC tail-sitter is capable of agile movement while remaining robust. (Watch Raffaello’s TED Talk)
Have a news item to share? Write us at contact@ted.com and you may see it included in this weekly round-up.
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Watch Dean Kamen’s talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 600+ TEDTalks.
]]>The machine, which GM says it aims to develop by 2012, would run on batteries and use wireless technology to avoid traffic backups and navigate cities.
Watch Dean Kamen of Segway talk about inventing and giving >>
Watch Larry Burns of GM talk about reinventing the car >>
The inspiration for this vehicle is Theo Jansen’s kinetic sculptures and, we suspect, Dean Kamen’s Segway.
]]>“The next president should recognize the power of technology,” Kamen says in the interview. “Technology is how we create wealth, how we cure diseases, how we’ll build an environment that’s sustainable and also gives people the capacity to pull more out of this world and still leave it better than when they found it.”
With his nonprofit organization FIRST, Kamen has been teaching kids that geeks have more fun since 1989. Watch him give his inspiring 2002 TEDtalk. — Sierra Feldner-Shaw
]]>Some 700,000 people, many of them teachers, have downloaded the software, Mr. Lee says. Much more expensive whiteboards may offer more features and better image resolution, but Mr. Lee’s version is adequate for most classroom applications.
For more video demos from TED, check out:
Hod Lipson’s “self-aware” robots >>
Dean Kamen’s moving demo of a robotic arm >>
Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ demo of Seadragon and Photosynth >>
The prosthetic-enhanced athlete will be able to run faster, jump higher and pitch harder than mere mortals. From an idea lab at MIT to a prosthetic design company in Iceland to amputees who see no limits to what their bodies can attain, […] technology will change the way we think about what is possible for the human body to achieve.
The article is a great complement to Dean Kamen‘s 2007 TEDTalk, which offers a preview of an extraordinary prosthetic arm and a perspective on the hope it gives to maimed soldiers.
]]>Dean Kamen’s “Luke arm” — a prosthesis named for the remarkably lifelike prosthetic worn by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars — came to the end of its two-year funding last month. Its fate now rests in the hands of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which funded the project. If DARPA gives the project the green light — and some greenbacks — the state-of-the-art bionic arm will go into clinical trials. If all goes well, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gives its approval, returning veterans could be wearing the new artificial limb by next year. …
Read more (and watch new video of the arm in action) on the IEEE’s site >>
And watch Dean Kamen’s moving TEDTalk on this project, unveiled at TED2007, right here:
The committee that selected these 14 Grand Challenges includes TEDTalks speakers Jaime Lerner, Dean Kamen, Craig Venter, Larry Page and Ray Kurzweil.
Listen to Ray Kurzweil at the press conference, discussing the future of solar power >>
]]>If you were moved and inspired by Amy Smith’s TEDTalk on her developing-world technologies, check out PopMech‘s profile of the like-minded Ashok Gadgil and Christina Galitsky and the cookstove they developed for use in Darfur, or 2006 winner Jock Brandis and his portable peanut sheller. If Dean Kamen’s robotic prosthetic arm TEDTalk interested you, dive into the video report on Johns Hopkins’ project. It’s a fascinating, well-reported awards package.
]]>Watch Dean Kamen’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances, including Kamen’s 2002 talk on inventing and giving.
Read more about Dean Kamen on TED.com.
Dean Kamen: New prosthetic arm for veterans
I got a visit- just almost exactly a year ago, a little over a year ago- from a very senior person at the Department of Defense, came to see me and said: 1,600 of the kids that we’ve sent out have come back missing at least one full arm. (pause) Whole arm. Shoulder disartic. And we’re doing the same thing we did for more or less- that we’ve done since the Civil War, a stick and a hook. And they deserve more than that. And, literally, this guy sat in my office in New Hampshire and said I want you to give me something that we can put on these kids that’ll pick up a raisin or a grape off a table, they’ll be able to put it in their mouth, without destroying either one, and they’ll be able to know the difference without looking at it. You know, had efferent, afferent, and haptic response.
He finishes explaining that, and I’m waiting for the big 300 pound paper proposal, and he said- That’s what I want from you. I said- Look. You’re nuts. That technology’s just not available right now. And it can’t be done. Not in an envelope of a human arm, with 21 degrees of freedom, from your shoulder to your fingertips. He said about two dozen of these 1,600 kids have come back bilateral. You think it’s bad to lose one arm? That’s an inconvenience compared to having both of them gone. (pause) I got a day job, and my nights and weekends are already filled up with things like “let’s supply water to the world, and power to the world, and educate all the kids”- which, Chris, I will not talk about. I don’t need another mission.
I keep thinking about these kids with no arms. He says to me, we’ve done some work around the country, we’ve got some pretty amazing neurology and other people. I said I’ll take a field trip, I’ll go see what you’ve got. Over the next month I visited lots of places, some out here, around the country, found the best of the best. I went down to Washington, I saw these guys, and said I did what you asked me, I looked at what’s out there- I still think you’re nuts. But not as nuts as I thought.
I put a team together, a little over 13 months ago, got up to 20 some-odd people. We said we’re gonna build a device that does what he wants. We have 14 out of the 21 degrees of freedom- you don’t need the ones in the last two fingers. We put this thing together. A couple of weeks ago we took it down to Walter Reed, which is unfortunately more in the news these days, we showed it to a bunch of guys. One guy who described himself as being lucky, ’cause he lost his left arm, and he’s a rightie. He sat at a table with 7 or 8 of these other guys, said he was lucky, ’cause he had his good arm, and then he pushed himself back from the table, he had no legs. These kids have attitudes that you just can’t believe.
So I’m gonna show you now, without the skin on it, a 30 second piece, and then I’m done. But understand, what you’re looking at, we made small enough to fit on a 50th percentile female, so that we could put it in any of these people. It’s gonna go inside something that we use in CAT scans and MRIs of whatever is their good arm, to make a silicon rubber- then coated, and painted in 3D- exact mirror image of their other limb, so you won’t see all the really cool stuff that’s in this series elastic set of 14 actuators, each one which has its own capability to sense temperature pressure. It also has a pneumatic cuff that holds it on, so the more they put themselves under load, the more it attaches, they take the load off, and it becomes, again, compliant. I’m gonna show you a guy doing a couple of simple things with this that we demonstrated in Washington. Can we look at this thing?
(video: “Gen X- Separate Exo Control”)
(man wearing prosthesis takes bottle of water from woman’s hand with prosthetic, then drinks from bottle)
Watch the fingers grab. The thumb comes up, wrist – this weighs 6.9 pounds.
(man raises prosthetic arm to face, scratches nose)
Gonna scratch his nose. It’s got 14 active degrees of freedom, now he’s gonna pick up a pen with his opposed thumb and index finger.
(man uses prosthesis to take pen from woman’s hand)
Now he’s gonna put that down, pick up a piece of paper, rotate all, the degrees of freedom in his hand and wrist, and read it.
(man lifts paper with prosthesis, rotates it toward eyes, and reads it)
(video ends, applause)
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