Looking deeply inside nature
through the magnifying glass of science,
designers extract principles,
processes and materials
that are forming the very basis of design methodology,
from synthetic constructs that resemble
biological materials
to computational methods that emulate neural processes,
nature is driving design.
Design is also driving nature.
In realms of genetics, regenerative medicine
and synthetic biology,
designers are growing novel technologies
not foreseen or anticipated by nature.
Bionics explores the interplay
between biology and design.
As you can see, my legs are bionic.
Today I will tell human stories
of bionic integration,
how electromechanics attached to the body
and implanted inside the body
are beginning to bridge the gap
between disability and ability,
between human limitation
and human potential.
Bionics has defined my physicality.
In 1982, both of my legs were amputated
due to tissue damage from frostbite
incurred during a mountain climbing accident.
At that time, I didn't view my body
as broken.
I reasoned that a human being
can never be broken.
Technology is broken.
Technology is inadequate.
This simple but powerful idea
was a call to arms
to advance technology
for the elimination of my own disability
and ultimately the disability of others.
I began by developing specialized limbs
that allowed me to return
to the vertical world of rock and ice climbing.
I quickly realized that the artificial part of my body
is malleable,
able to take on any form, any function,
a blank slate through which to create
perhaps structures that could extend beyond
biological capability.
I made my height adjustable.
I could be as short as five feet or as tall as I'd like.
(Laughter)
So when I was feeling badly about myself,
insecure, I would jack my height up,
but when I was feeling confident and suave,
I would knock my height down a notch
just to give the competition a chance.
(Laughter) (Applause)
Narrow, wedged feet allowed me to climb
steep rock fissures
where the human foot cannot penetrate,
and spiked feet enabled me to climb
vertical ice walls
without ever experiencing muscle leg fatigue.
Through technological innovation,
I returned to my sport stronger and better.
Technology had eliminated my disability
and allowed me a new climbing prowess.
As a young man, I imagined a future world
where technology so advanced
could rid the world of disability,
a world in which neural implants would allow
the visually impaired to see,
a world in which the paralyzed could walk
via body exoskeletons.
Sadly, because of deficiencies in technology,
disability is rampant in the world.
This gentleman is missing three limbs.
As a testimony to current technology,
he is out of the wheelchair,
but we need to do a better job in bionics
to allow one day full rehabilitation
for a person with this level of injury.
At the MIT Media Lab, we've established
the Center for Extreme Bionics.
The mission of the center
is to put forth fundamental science
and technological capability that will allow
the biomechatronic and regenerative repair of humans
across a broad range
of brain and body disabilities.
Today, I'm going to tell you how my legs function,
how they work,
as a case in point for this center.
Now, I made sure to shave my legs last night,
because I knew I'd be showing them off.
Bionics entails the engineering of extreme interfaces.
There's three extreme interfaces in my bionic limbs:
mechanical, how my limbs are attached
to my biological body;
dynamic, how they move like flesh and bone;
and electrical, how they communicate
with my nervous system.
I'll begin with mechanical interface.
In the area of design, we still do not understand
how to attach devices to the body mechanically.
It's extraordinary to me that in this day and age,
one of the most mature, oldest technologies
in the human timeline, the shoe,
still gives us blisters.
How can this be?
We have no idea how to attach things to our bodies.
This is the beautifully lyrical design work
of Professor Neri Oxman at the MIT Media Lab,
showing spatially varying exoskeletal impedances,
shown here by color variation
in this 3D-printed model.
Imagine a future where clothing
is stiff and soft where you need it,
when you need it, for optimal support and flexibility,
without ever causing discomfort.
My bionic limbs are attached to my biological body
via synthetic skins
with stiffness variations
that mirror my underlying tissue biomechanics.
To achieve that mirroring,
we first developed a mathematical model
of my biological limb.
To that end, we used imaging tools such as MRI
to look inside my body
to figure out the geometries and locations
of various tissues.
We also took robotic tools.
Here's a 14-actuator circle
that goes around the biological limb.
The actuators come in, find the surface of the limb,
measure its unloaded shape,
and then they push on the tissues
to measure tissue compliances
at each anatomical point.
We combine these imaging and robotic data
to build a mathematical description
of my biological limb, shown on the left.
You see a bunch of points, or nodes.
At each node, there's a color that represents tissue compliance.
We then do a mathematical transformation
to the design of the synthetic skin
shown on the right,
and we've discovered optimality is
where the body is stiff, the synthetic skin should be soft,
where the body is soft, the synthetic skin is stiff,
and this mirroring occurs
across all tissue compliances.
With this framework,
we produced bionic limbs
that are the most comfortable limbs I've ever worn.
Clearly in the future,
our clothing, our shoes, our braces,
our prostheses, will no longer be designed
and manufactured using artisan strategies,
but rather data-driven quantitative frameworks.
In that future, our shoes
will no longer give us blisters.
We're also embedding sensing and smart materials
into the synthetic skins.
This is a material
developed by SRI International, California.
Under electrostatic effect, it changes stiffness.
So under zero voltage, the material is compliant.
It's floppy like paper.
Then the button's pushed, a voltage is applied,
and it becomes stiff as a board.
We embed this material into the synthetic skin
that attaches my bionic limb to my biological body.
When I walk here,
it's no voltage.
My interface is soft and compliant.
The button's pushed, voltage is applied,
and it stiffens,
offering me a greater maneuverability
of the bionic limb.
We're also building exoskeletons.
This exoskeleton becomes stiff and soft
in just the right areas of the running cycle
to protect the biological joints
from high impacts and degradation.
In the future, we'll all be wearing exoskeletons
in common activities such as running.
Next, dynamic interface.
How do my bionic limbs move like flesh and bone?
At my MIT lab, we study how humans
with normal physiologies stand, walk and run.
What are the muscles doing,
and how are they controlled by the spinal cord?
This basic science motivates what we build.
We're building bionic ankles, knees and hips.
We're building body parts from the ground up.
The bionic limbs that I'm wearing are called BiOMs.
They've been fitted to nearly 1,000 patients,
400 of which have been U.S. wounded soldiers.
How does it work? At heel strike, under computer control,
the system controls stiffness
to attenuate the shock of the limb hitting the ground.
Then at mid-stance, the bionic limb outputs
high torques and powers to lift the person
into the walking stride,
comparable to how muscles work in the calf region.
This bionic propulsion is very important
clinically to patients.
So, on the left you see the bionic device
worn by a lady --
on the right a passive device worn by the same lady
that fails to emulate normal muscle function --
enabling her to do something
everyone should be able to do,
go up and down their steps at home.
Bionics also allows for extraordinary athletic feats.
Here's a gentleman running up a rocky pathway.
This is Steve Martin, not the comedian,
who lost his legs in a bomb blast in Afghanistan.
We're also building exoskeletal structures
using these same principles
that wrap around a biological limb.
This gentleman does not have
any leg condition, any disability.
He has a normal physiology,
so these exoskeletons are applying
muscle-like torques and powers
so that his own muscles need not apply
those torques and powers.
This is the first exoskeleton in history
that actually augments human walking.
It significantly reduces metabolic cost.
It's so profound in its augmentation
that when a normal, healthy person
wears the device for 40 minutes
and then takes it off,
their own biological legs
feel ridiculously heavy and awkward.
We're beginning the age in which
machines attached to our bodies
will make us stronger and faster
and more efficient.
Moving on to electrical interface,
how do my bionic limbs communicate
with my nervous system?
Across my residual limb are electrodes
that measure the electrical pulse of my muscles.
That's communicated to the bionic limb,
so when I think about moving my phantom limb,
the robot tracks those movement desires.
This diagram shows fundamentally
how the bionic limb is controlled,
so we model the missing biological limb,
and we've discovered what reflexes occurred,
how the reflexes of the spinal cord
are controlling the muscles,
and that capability is embedded
in the chips of the bionic limb.
What we've done, then, is we modulate
the sensitivity of the reflex,
the modeled spinal reflex,
with the neural signal,
so when I relax my muscles in my residual limb,
I get very little torque and power,
but the more I fire my muscles,
the more torque I get,
and I can even run.
And that was the first demonstration
of a running gait under neural command.
Feels great.
(Applause)
We want to go a step further.
We want to actually close the loop
between the human and the bionic external limb.
We're doing experiments where we're growing
nerves, transected nerves,
through channels, or micro-channel rays.
On the other side of the channel,
the nerve then attaches to cells,
skin cells and muscle cells.
In the motor channels we can sense
how the person wishes to move.
That can be sent out wirelessly to the bionic limb,
then sensors on the bionic limb
can be converted to stimulations
in adjacent channels, sensory channels.
So, when this is fully developed
and for human use,
persons like myself will not only have
synthetic limbs that move like flesh and bone,
but actually feel like flesh and bone.
This video shows Lisa Mallette
shortly after being fitted with two bionic limbs.
Indeed, bionics is making
a profound difference in people's lives.
(Video) Lisa Mallette: Oh my God.
Oh my God, I can't believe it.
It's just like I've got a real leg.
Now, don't start running.
Man: Now turn around,
and do the same thing walking up.
Walk up, get on your heel to toe,
like you would normally just walk on level ground.
Try to walk right up the hill.
LM: Oh my God.
Man: Is it pushing you up?
LM: Yes! I'm not even -- I can't even describe it.
Man: It's pushing you right up.
Hugh Herr: Next week, I'm visiting the center's —
(Applause) Thank you, thank you.
Thank you. Next week I'm visiting
the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services,
and I'm going to try to convince CMS
to grant appropriate code language and pricing
so this technology can be made available
to the patients that need it.
Thank you. (Applause)
It's not well appreciated, but over half
of the world's population
suffers from some form of cognitive,
emotional, sensory or motor condition,
and because of poor technology,
too often, conditions result in disability
and a poorer quality of life.
Basic levels of physiological function
should be a part of our human rights.
Every person should have the right
to live life without disability
if they so choose --
the right to live life without severe depression;
the right to see a loved one
in the case of seeing impaired;
or the right to walk or to dance,
in the case of limb paralysis
or limb amputation.
As a society, we can achieve these human rights
if we accept the proposition
that humans are not disabled.
A person can never be broken.
Our built environment, our technologies,
are broken and disabled.
We the people need not accept our limitations,
but can transcend disability
through technological innovation.
Indeed, through fundamental advances
in bionics in this century,
we will set the technological foundation
for an enhanced human experience,
and we will end disability.
I'd like to finish up with one more story,
a beautiful story,
the story of Adrianne Haslet-Davis.
Adrianne lost her left leg
in the Boston terrorist attack.
I met Adrianne when this photo was taken
at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.
Adrianne is a dancer, a ballroom dancer.
Adrianne breathes and lives dance.
It is her expression. It is her art form.
Naturally, when she lost her limb
in the Boston terrorist attack,
she wanted to return to the dance floor.
After meeting her and driving home in my car,
I thought, I'm an MIT professor.
I have resources. Let's build her a bionic limb
to enable her to go back to her life of dance.
I brought in MIT scientists with expertise
in prosthetics, robotics, machine learning
and biomechanics,
and over a 200-day research period,
we studied dance.
We brought in dancers with biological limbs,
and we studied how do they move,
what forces do they apply on the dance floor,
and we took those data
and we put forth fundamental principles of dance,
reflexive dance capability,
and we embedded that intelligence
into the bionic limb.
Bionics is not only about making people
stronger and faster.
Our expression, our humanity
can be embedded into electromechanics.
It was 3.5 seconds
between the bomb blasts
in the Boston terrorist attack.
In 3.5 seconds, the criminals and cowards
took Adrianne off the dance floor.
In 200 days, we put her back.
We will not be intimidated, brought down,
diminished, conquered or stopped
by acts of violence.
(Applause)
Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to introduce
Adrianne Haslet-Davis,
her first performance since the attack.
She's dancing with Christian Lightner.
(Applause)
(Music: "Ring My Bell" performed by Enrique Iglesias)
(Applause)
Ladies and gentlemen,
members of the research team,
Elliott Rouse and Nathan Villagaray-Carski.
Elliott and Nathan.
(Applause)