Vanderbilt bionic devices stride toward market approval
Fictional depictions of bionic devices and real-life video of Oscar Pistorius sprinting in his "Blade Runner" gear skew the reality of being an amputee.
Craig Hutto knows the difficulty of taking simple steps.
Having lost a leg to a shark in 2005, he has to lift the dead weight of a prosthetic leg when going up stairs. He has to make very deliberate adjustments to deal with small changes in surface slopes. A momentary lapse of attention could send him toppling to the ground.
Hutto volunteers with the Vanderbilt Center for Intelligent Mechatronics testing out experimental devices to make life easier for amputees and others with physical limitations. Three of those devices are moving beyond the experimental phase — a fully functional hand that reads nerve impulses, a sophisticated exoskeleton to enable the paralyzed to walk and a more advanced robotic leg that Hutto has used.
"The sensors are able to tell the leg, 'Hey, I'm walking up a slope,'" Hutto said, explaining how the Vanderbilt device recognizes changing inclines as well as stairways and then powers up motors within the ankle and knee components.
Michael Goldfarb, the professor who leads the center, grew up watching The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, but he does not like to compare his work to those old television shows about bionic parts that gave people superhuman strength.
"In Hollywood, they do things by computer-generated imagery," he said. "They do not have to obey the laws of physics. They don't have to deal with a lot of things we have to deal with."
The exoskeleton is scheduled to become available in Europe next year and may be sold in the United States in 2016 depending upon the outcome of clinical trials. It would mark the commercial debut of a device from the Vanderbilt center.
This week Cleveland-based Parker Hannifin, one of Vanderbilt's commercial partners, shipped exoskeletons to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta for trials that begin there and will involve up to five spinal cord rehabilitation centers. Orthocare Innovations, which is based in Seattle, is the partner on the hand project. And Freedom Innovations of Irvine, Calif., is working with Vanderbilt on the robotic leg technology. Orthocare and Freedom are also close to starting clinical trials.
The center recruits a small number of disabled people to test its experimental equipment at Vanderbilt, but it does not function as a rehabilitation center. Nor does it do clinical trials.
Hutto got an invitation to volunteer when he was 18 years old and a freshman at Middle Tennessee State University — about two years after the shark attack. He went to graduate school at Vanderbilt and is now an acute-care nurse practitioner.
Reach Tom Wilemon at 615-762-5961 and on Twitter @TomWilemon.
By the numbers:
273,00 - people in the United States with spinal cord injury.
2 million - poeple in the United States living with loss of limb.
Sources: National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center and Amputee Coalition.