Prosthetic Research Presentation Overview: Final Graded Posting

     On Friday, December 11th, of 2009, I presented the results of my research in emerging prosthetic technologies in front of my COM 435 class.  The experience was actually pretty awesome.  The way that the whole thing is supposed to work is that half of the class is composed of presenters while the other half walks around and learns about the research while tweeting for all to see.  The posters and presenters were organized into rows of posters on both sides, like walking down grocery store aisles of poster boards.  The coolest part about this whole thing was the fact that very few of the presentations were similar and all of them were very exciting new ideas.  They were also mostly practical as well, meaning that things like Google Voice, a Power Mat, virtual realities for video games, and wireless computer-brained dung beetles were all things that I could take home and make a useful in my life.  Maybe the last one on that list would be a stretch but at least it would be entertaining.

     My presentation was over prosthetic technologies, especially in areas that I have been focusing on for my senior design project.  I was able to blend multiple forms of media by showing a poster which looked like this:

I also was able to borrow my senior design group's prosthetic leg for display.  I actually ended up wearing the prosthetic leg during the presentation because people were not quite making it to our row due to the fact that a presenter near our row brought a solar powered go-cart that everyone just rushed to without taking a glance down our row of posters.  I thought that if I put on the leg and started hobbling around, at the very least someone would come over to investigate the odd-looking device.  This strategy seemed to work and I finally got to talk to some people about new technologies in the world of prosthetics.  The leg looked like this:

So it is easy to see why this got significant attention even in the face of a really cool go-cart.  I also managed to fit in a video, that I have previously blogged about.  The whole presentation was about the social, communications impact of devices like this one that are changing the way we think about people that have disabilities.  The concept was that legs like this one have the ability to allow people to jump higher than normal and lower the metabolic output of the body by decreasing effort expelled during activities.  These improvements would not just return the normal ability of the body, but actually improve upon it.  That means that losing a limb would no longer be a detriment, but an opportunity to have a piece of cyborg technology enhance the physical abilities of the body.  Some day, mental abilities will be added to that list as well.  If you wish to know more about my project technically then take a look at my previous postings, as I am have covered this topic throughout the semester.