Why I Can’t Stop 3D Printing Prosthetics… In My Kitchen
Accenture Labs is designing and 3D printing for accessibility with smart materials.
Friend: “What did you do this weekend, Ben?”
Me, very excited: “Almost finished printing my first upper extremity exoskeleton!”
Friend: “…”
This happened to me more than once. Partially inspired by sports, part by engineering, and part by my love of Iron Man, I really did print an exoskeleton (although not the most sophisticated one) in my college apartment when I was 19.
I’ve always had a passion for accessibility starting with my first internship shadowing practitioners in an orthotics and prosthetics clinic. Before joining the Future Technologies R&D group at Accenture Labs, I also worked in a pediatric research lab (The M2L Innovation Lab) for 5 years. While there, I focused on designing innovative wearable technologies to assist children with physical disabilities.
These projects ranged from designing easy to use video game controller adapters to measuring movement from conductive sensors embedded into clothing. While designing these solutions, I loved working with 3D printing, wearables, e-textiles, and other emerging technologies.
In my current role at Accenture Labs, I work on identifying and designing new smart material systems using advanced manufacturing techniques. That may sound like a mouthful, but a lot of the ideas start with “What if…?”
“What if you didn’t have to worry about losing your remote again because your couch was the remote?”
“What if your shoes could tell you how your running form is?”
“What if you could 3D print a prosthetic hand to make it easier to shoot a basketball?”
We have built prototypes to answer all these questions, and the last one was particularly exciting because of my passion for accessibility.
After gaining a broad understanding of the related work within emerging 3D printing efforts, prosthetic design, and haptic feedback, we wanted to combine these technologies into an important application.
We designed a low cost, 3D printed prototype basketball prosthetic hand. This idea was really cool because it was able to showcase how 3D printed electronics, mechanical components, and multi-material 3D printing can come together to help a community I care deeply about.
As a hardware researcher during COVID, we didn’t want to just stop the design process and I once again was 3D printing a prosthetic from my kitchen.
After months of prototyping, we are able to demo the work at the User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2020) conference. You can watch the demo video below or view it on YouTube here.
I’m looking forward to seeing where else we can embed “smarts” and design other impactful solutions.
If you’d like to learn more, visit our Accenture Labs page, or contact me directly to discuss how advanced manufacturing techniques can be used to solve a problem for clients in your industry.
Ben Greenspan, PhD
ben.greenspan@accenture.com
