 Without further ado to make sure we can keep this ball rolling, our speakers today. First, Wayne is a biomedical engineer and entrepreneur. He received his undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from Columbia University and his graduate degree in mechanical engineering with a focus on biomechanics from Boston University. He worked as the clinical research coordinator at DECA Research and Development on the DARPA DECA Luke prosthetic arm project and the product marketing manager for the MIT Media Lab startup IWOC for the BIOM-powered prosthetic ankle system, now the autoblocking power ankle. He has continued his work in prosthetics focusing on advanced human interface controls and fitting systems for amputees while working in partnership with bio-designs. Wayne founded and leads his multidisciplinary engineering and design team at Charge Concepts, whose mission is to turn innovative concepts into impactful real-world technology programs and initiatives. And our other speaker, Chuck Hildreth, Jr. was injured in an electrical substation accident in 1981. As a result, he lost both arms and suffered electrical exit wounds on his kneecaps as well as his feet. He is a positive father of two and gives encouraging talks to new amputees. He served as a lead test pilot and amputee trainer for the DARPA DECA Luke prosthetic arm system for all three generations of his development. Additionally, Chuck is a competitive downhill skier and is the president of Lakes Region Disabled Sports, a nonprofit organization that provides recreation and fitness for individuals with disabilities in a safe, supportive, independent, and fun environment. Without further ado, please welcome Wayne and Chuck. Thank you very much. Chuck, they're far too kind to us here. We've never gotten an introduction like that and a crowd like this. So first off, I want to say thank you for all coming and participating in this talk. It's not typical for what we do here at DEFCON. I've never been here, and I was super nervous and super anxious, and I'll talk more about that in a second. But joining me is Chuck Hildreth, Jr. with a Luke arm. Anyone here who's a Star Wars fan? Anyone get the Luke connection? Maybe. Laurel Adams-Coss is an occupational therapist with a VA. She's got over 20 years of history. She has been stuck in an airport for 15 hours and didn't make it. So you guys have to suffer through me presenting through her slides. I am sorry, but just bear with me. I'll try to get through that. We also have a video presentation from two seventh graders who just won the National Invention Competition. And we're going to be talking about our lab where you guys can maybe help out and work on technology directly on Chuck that would not only benefit amputees, but anyone who has thermal regulation issues. Is it hot outside for any of you guys, or is it just me that's going to? OK. I mean, shape rounds the shape, so it's hot out there. So the body imputation. Who knows who drew this? Anyone? Da Vinci. Great. So that's another point. We're going to go through. We're going to make this fun. I want you guys to participate. I may be asking you questions. Join us if you have questions for us. Stop and ask. We do have some time, but it's a really unique opportunity for us to get to engage with you and maybe take some of your expertise, your ideas, a different perspective because us engineers, Chuck, they always say that we've got blinders on and tunnel vision. No offense to any of you that are. But at DECA, we had target fixation. Like it's how we think it should work. But are we really listening and understanding what is most valuable to the amputee, to the clinician, to the family member, to the spouse, to the kid that has to help take care of them? And the human body is such a cool machine. And you really don't understand how well it works until something in the neuromuscular skeletal nervous pathway is disrupted, right? Oh yeah. Chuck, I probably shouldn't have put that up there. But take a look at this. We'll visit this boy later and see how some of our technology is impacting him. But it's through efforts of people that are not in the prosthetics field that are making changes and making impacts. We'll talk about why technology is slow to change and what you guys might do to help if you so should. So Ethan was lost all four of his limbs due to sepsis when he was three. He's now 11 going on 12 with a mouth going on 30. He likes Xbox and telling me and putting him in place. That's Colleen, who Chuck and Donna and I met, who is his case worker and his project manager too, just to make sure that he has an advocate and he gets whatever he needs while they're living on the farm in North Carolina, that they have what they need to help him grow, develop, and function as an able-bodied, enabled individual. All right. So when you think of prostheses, right, what do you think of? What's this thing on the left? Sorry? A dolphin? Was there a movie about that? OK, so I have a lot of dumb movie references. Bear with me. Second guy? I'll be back. Terminator? And the third is what we most typically think of one of the most visual ones for amputees. So we're not going to talk about who he is, but those are the cheetah running legs. They're very good for running and running only. If you ever watched any of them as they warm up, they're balancing all the time, not because they want to, not because they're so psyched like I am here to talk to you guys today, but because they're not stable, right? So they're optimized for that. And some are biomechanically disadvantaged. Some are biomechanically advantaged for certain things. And then we might be talking about specific technology for specific functions as well. So again, never been to a DEF CON in my life. And this is not our typical crowd. So I asked Sid. I asked Nina. How about all those guys back there that are volunteering? You guys put on a terrific event, a big hand for you. And thank you so much for getting us out here and giving us the opportunity to talk to you guys. So they said, Wayne, you're a spaz. Chill out. Have fun. Make it your own. I'm like, are you serious? Because it's party time. Excellent. And if you're not first, you're last, apparently, because I'm a NASCAR American from the Asian country of Michigan, and we're going to get this thing started. So here's the game in the ground rules, people. I'm going to try to make this hopefully entertaining for you. If not, it's just going to be entertaining for me, and I'll be the only one who gets it, and that's OK too. I hope this is memorable. You learned some things along the way. We're going to try to tell you some things in my typical non-engineer fashion, meaning a little sporadic, not a boring presentation with a ton of words, I promise. This is the busiest slide that I wrote. The rest of them will most be pictures, videos, and stories from Chuck and I. And if you have questions, please do ask. So the great vanilla says, stop collaborating and missing. You're going to listen to a lot of mostly true stories. We've got a couple of laughs out there. It's OK. Thank you. Sympathy laps are greatly appreciated, because I'm super nervous and anxious right now. You should be. So these are mostly true stories that we're going to tell you. Some of the names have been changed to protect the guilty. We're going to issue challenges in Easter eggs throughout. We're going to jump back and forth throughout the presentation. So time is relative. And I'm hoping that your reality gets a little bit augmented after our conversations, after some of the questions and discussions, and after participating in the lab. So has anyone seen the movie, Whiting Crashers? No. What is rule number 76? Does anyone know? I'll give you a hint. These pieces play like a. Good job, guys. All right. So we at Charge Concept say, we'd like you to be participatory or be pledged as tribute. It's called being volume told. Just kidding. Challenge by choice. If you guys want to ask questions, please do so. We'd love to hear from you. Chuck and I love talking to other people and hearing it. I ask a lot of dumb questions. So I guarantee there's nothing that you can possibly ask that's going to be more stupid than something I'm going to say. So have at it. Have fun. The hard deck is positive vibes only. So we're going to be encouraging. We're going to hopefully go out there where you understand and amputee better, how you might be able to help someone who's disabled, how you might be able to take your talents or something that you see and translate that into something that benefits just one person, a group of people, maybe the thousands. We always like to work together. And we'll talk more about this in a second. Form teams, we've got a couple projects coming up. If you've got a project after this conversation, we hope that you stay in touch with us. So it goes beyond DEF CON. It goes beyond the biohacking village. It goes beyond the lab. It doesn't end here. So spread that message of kindness, compassion, and we'll go from there. So I want to say thank you to all these different groups. But most importantly, starting with that in green down here, all of you that are attending this convention and listening to us today. So the Media Lab, the National Health Services of the United Kingdom, who've adopted a lot of our technology, Mobius Bionics out of DECA, who is now producing the arm, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, who funds most of the technology that we're going to be talking about today, as well as a lot of the innovations in prosthetics care. Biodesigns and Next Step are two prosthetic facilities that are an integral part of my education beyond the schools. And they're teaching me how to really stop and listen, really how to make sure that we don't focus on the componentry. We focus on that individual as a man and machine combined, the interface, and the dynamics that make them feel the most whole. Everyone following me so far? So charge concepts, we were formed in 2012. We're a passionate group of individuals that range from industrial designers, mechanical engineers, biomedical engineers, cranial facial surgeons, and people that just want to do really cool things and build cool tech and hack things together. So in some ways, we feel like in ship to you guys and that we're really somewhat home here. We'll see if I'm still welcome after this presentation. So we're broken down into a bunch of different groups. Charge applied sciences is where we build the Batmobiles and other superhero technology. Charge giving is something that every one of our projects and every one of our team members is responsible for. All of the causes that we choose, there has to be a philanthropic tie. There has to be an impact. That's how we choose projects. Charge health and wellness is where prosthetics falls under, as well as technology such as electromagnetic pain management therapy that we're working on. Again, the human body is one of the most fascinating machines ever and trying to crack it is just something else. Charge realty, real estate technology and charge toys and entertainment is probably my favorite division where we get to build toys, we get to entertain, create immersive experiences and also do some water slide testing, which is awesome. I've had the fortune to be able to go all around the world to be able to train, talk to and discuss prosthetic technology and interact with different individuals that are contributing to the cause. That might be part of it and need to get some assistance or want to just brainstorm and mind jam together and figure out what can we do to make it together. So they were like silly American. All of you guys who've been watching Game of Thrones think there's seven kingdoms in Westeros, but there's not, there's four. So we've been to three out of the four. Northern Ireland is the only one that we have not gone to so far. We have 20% of the national health facilities that provide prosthetic care that are running our socket technology. And that's the part that no one focuses on. It's not sexy, it's not glamorous, but it makes all the difference in the world. And Chuck's gonna tell you about this in a little bit. Might put on a little bit of a magic mic show if you guys are really lucky. But here you see the clinical teams from Cardiff, Wrexham and Swansea. That red piece or red device is what we call the hi-fi transfemeral imager. We put the amputee in it. We wrap them with plaster and we take an impression. And this is what makes that shape that is so characteristic of what we call the hi-fi interface. And we use alternating compression and release and biomechanics to stabilize along the length of the bone versus just squeezing someone really tight or having it loose like a bucket or a blob. So if you can think about putting a cylinder in a water balloon and trying to capture that cylinder, well, that's what it's like to be able to try to rigidly attach of a heavy prosthetic component to a body, right? Because a lot of times it's just floating. Your ends are severed, the normal points that interact and tie the muscles to the bone and anchor it are gone. So it really becomes a lot more challenging. As we study abroad, water slide testing, charge toys and entertainment. This was in Cardiff, Wales. That was one of my clinicians. I took him out there as a reward. So there are benefits to playing some of these games and being active and engaged when we hang out. We established a US Embassy over there and we were working on international relations on a peace treaty because the same week that we were there, Trump was there. Not getting into politics, but we got out of London and went over to Wales. So it's where old coyotes like me hang out. And the girls of the coyote, Egli, says, hey, you're a person of color and you're American. So you rap, right? I'm like, what in the world did you, where does that come from? And this is complete attention, but we tell silly stories. So then they followed us and I met this guy who, I'm like, are you DJ Jazzy Jeff from the Fresh Prince? He's like, yeah, how'd you know in his British accent? So together we formed, well actually, they dubbed us Blackie Chan Adventures or Team Rush Hour. And I'm like, man, do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? And I'm just like, what? So now this is a story all about how my work got flipped and upside down. And I'd like to take a minute to sit right here, telling you how you guys got stuck listening to me for an hour and wondering why you're here. So I have your attention yet, right? Boring presentation, check. And I'm all flustered now. Performance anxiety, Chuck. Performance anxiety. He's my emotional support animal. And Donna, I'm not trying to put you on her spot, but we need an adult in a chaperone. So she was nice enough to come here and keep us in line. So at Charge Concepts, we believe in that lessons can be learned both on and off the field. And I'm bumping this. I'm making you guys sad with the previews apparently. This is the slide I wanna be on, I promise. And I'm gonna try not to bump that. We had the fortune to be able to sail around the Caribbean in February of 2017 when we were the exact opposite problem, where it's cold in New England where Chuck, Donna and I are from for an extended period of time. And there we were selling portable charger distribution systems as well being embedded as secret agents, trying to figure out what kind of immersive technology would benefit the guests and the crews. And I got to bring some of my business partners, some of my best friends out on these cruises with us. And we learned some important things that I wanna talk to you about because I know you guys get this, but it's so important in the world of social media and instant gratification, where we're sometimes become a little bit more self-centered and don't realize what we're missing out on when we're not collaborating with others. So on Island, no matter how beautiful, when you're by yourself, it's kind of a lonely place, right? So we say that there's no eye and team and bad things happen when you face the supervillains. But there's two eyes and something, something. And that, again, as you say, you're gonna wind up ronery, just so ronery. So my friends also reminded me like, hey, Wayne, you're wrong. There is an eye and team. You just have to look through the a-hole and I'm just, oh, that's aggressive. So I said, well, let me phone some other friends. Sometimes you want some that can rap better than you can. Sometimes you want some that are a legend and have created superheroes that we pine after that their science fiction becomes our reality. And both of these guys were fortunate enough to be some of our clients and we got to design some of their tech and we're very proud of that. Charge giving, give you an example. We lost a lot of good men out there playing with the Yankees. I moonlight with the Yankees teaching robotics and education to them and I'm sorry, sir, I know this is unbearable and insufferable for you. Please hang in there. I'm a medical professional, I think. But in the Bronx and Harlem, those kids could really use people like you that show them that anything's possible that are willing to take the time to work with them. So whether it's the first robotics competition, VEX Robotics Competition, Boys and Girls Club, Boy Scouts of America, Girl Scouts of America, please do take the time to get involved and maybe mentor some of them when you get the chance. So, brought some friends with us. This is Ava Conlon and Ms. Piper Lala. As we mentioned, they went to the National Invention Competition with an idea. And their premise was that, hey, it's cold when we go skiing. My dad's an amputee, it's gotta be cold and carbon fiber and fiberglass and metal components. Maybe we build something. Okay. So they're gonna tell you about their project. And see if it's... Hey, Chuck, what'd you just do? Shifting the car. Shifting the car? Driving the wheels? Yeah. Whoa, who's driving? Yeah, so this is really happening. My friend, Chuck, is an amazing human being. I think you're shooting across the street. Look, man, no hands. No hands. I'll throw them up my sleeves. So I'm trying to show you guys a little bit about who we are and the mayhem that happens when Chuck and I get together. But again, understanding that these are people that are amputees. These are those that have a sense of humor that are positive in life no matter what has happened to them is truly inspiring. And Chuck, Donna, for that, I thank you guys for being here and having been my friend and taught me for over 10 years. And I'm grateful for you guys and the opportunity to talk to all of you. So Laurel Adams is supposed to be here. Some of these slides aren't gonna make as much sense because she's not here, but I'm gonna show you them anyways so that it's unrecorded and I can show her because she has no idea. We're gonna play presentation roulette here. So Laurel Adams has been a occupational therapist for the past 20 years. She's a specialist in upper extremity, OT therapy. She participates regularly with the amputee or I'm sorry, the disabled wheelchair games. And she really focuses on training that is personal that really means something to them that restores that functionality, dignity, and just self-confidence and love for the world. We always got in trouble with Stuart and Linda and others who were our bosses because we went off protocol, but we did some of the most important studying of what the arm would do in real life, not just our artificial box and blocks test, that you can move the box around, move the cups around, unless you could turn it into a prosthetic drinking game? Really not a lot of use, but if it's something that really makes that person feel whole again, you have something right there. So one of our challenges is here, we play F and magic or Jedi mind tricks. One of our presenters is a tiny dancer and actually performed, you'll have to figure out which one is us. And then back to the future in mystical arts, right? So time travel. And I really didn't understand this and I promised maybe you'll figure out, please tell me afterwards if you do, if it didn't make any sense and it was just dumb, please come tell me afterwards. Love to hear it. So caring for an amputee. It's mostly magic fairy dust, nothing else to it, but really what differentiates the good clinicians and those that understand them, it's a bit of art, it's a bit of science, it's a bit of technology, but it's a lot of compassion and patience for people. So I know I rattled like seven things off with three in there, but they kind of fall in some of these bubbles in the Venn diagram, but it's those that really get it, which I think is if you chose to be here, there was something in you guys that understands this fundamentally, otherwise you probably would not have come to a prosthetics talk at DEF CON. So I'm gonna give you the abbreviated drunk history version of this, all right? First, prosthetic devices came about in the Egyptian era where the pharaohs and the wealthy had them. So you had partial hand and partial foot amputees, those count. And they, whether it's a saw blade accent or they stub their toe really hard, kicking someone else, it does happen. And then prosthetics are always tied to times of conflict and war because that's when people focus on it and people lose limb, limbs in horrifying, gruesome fashion that draws a lot of attention. So just like Sir Jamie Lannister had his iron fist, that's a real thing. In the middle ages, the knights were when their hands were chopped off by others in their swords, were given an iron fist so they can beat the crap out of someone else in the fight. Not very useful, slowed them down, but it was kind of cool in their own way when you have a sledgehammer attached to your limb. Civil war was another one, right? So you've got period correct photos of these individuals here. And you have the development of some of the first major leg prosthetics as well as the arm ones. How do those look? Would anyone like to volunteer to take off their arm or leg and replace with one of those? Don't feel, no? Okay. Probably a good choice because, I appreciate you, Chuck. Probably a good choice because unfortunately, technology in our field advances very, very slowly. You fast forward to World War I, the major breakthrough in upper extremity prosthetics came with a Hosmer device. Hey, Chuck, can you raise your hook? Chuck's got a wicked left hook. Do not get into a fight with him. Okay? So believe it or not, that's one of the most functional and reliable devices on the market. It's body power. Chuck's gonna give you a demonstration later on how that works, but also, what also happens in addition to movements, grabbing things? What else do we have in our hand? What other senses are tied to it? Touch? Sorry? Proprioception. Proprioception, and that's the magic word. Proprioception. Touch is right too. Heat, right in it? One? Pressure? Okay, so there's a lot more going on. So even though this device is all mechanical and doesn't tie directly to your nerves, some magical things happen with reworking and remapping the brain, where that pressure translated on a different area or control translated in a different area, now makes you restore that sense of proprioception, just like you said, and thank you very much. Okay. So, what do you think the number one reason for amputation is in the US? Diabetes, yes, and why? Diabetic neuropathy or vascular complications, right? They tend to have their feet swollen pool and they can't get the blood back up and we wind up with a lot of people that are amputees. So, well, now we have this problem, okay? We have most of our funding tied to wartime efforts, tied to organizations like DARPA, but our number one cause is not wartime conflicts or major trauma. This is not the case around the rest of the world. So there's about 2.2 million amputees in the US currently and that number is expected to double by 2050. And some of the things that we're doing and learning now, whether it's the artificial sugars, the diet products, really are not that good for you. So if anyone's addicted to any of those, be careful. And then we're talking about prevention as well, but how to care for it, how to fund it. And sometimes we need a grassroots efforts from people like you to really advance technology and get new ideas out there. Because if the funding is not there to develop it and you have a very limited market, any investor, that's not a really good solid business plan, right? It's unfortunate, but it's the reality of what we're working with. Chuck, you may have to talk about the catching of your ninja skill thing at the table that time when you do your demonstration of the Hosmerhook, if you don't mind. So then some magical things happen in a galaxy far, far away. In the 1980s, about 1980 to be exact, in what movie was this guys? Starsh. I believe that they allow stoning here for smart guys like you. Be careful, Chuck, you might lose your legs too. Then become one of my patients again. I won't. Yeah, you should see this guy on a ski slope. He's fast, right? But this brought the first intervention, one of the first real prosthetic applications and calls to the forefront of the mainstream in a lot of people. And hence why we decided to call this the luke arm when it came time to naming the project. Now in post-marketing lingo, they say it's life under kinetic evolution. Okay, if this is the way that we evolve. But I hope that most of us are fighting for the light side and not the dark. And then we have this. He keeps on saying, I'll be back. And he has, for the most part, through most of these movies, one, two, three, four, five, six, and coming back this fall in November in 2019. I swear I do not work for them. But Terminator's coming back. And yeah, this was, what was the first thing that started Skynet? Do you guys remember the one critical piece that had to go back in time and steal? Yes ma'am, the arm, right? So that's what we built. And this is at DECA Research and Development. I swear to DARPA and DECA that we are not building killer humanoid cyborg robots. This is a disclaimer when I make bad jokes like these that I have to say. But we're trying to build re-enabling tech. So we decided to take one of the arms off because I thought it was funny and a good idea. And our big boss ordered two of these, one's in his house and one's in our office. And we mounted one of the arms on and the proportions are strangely correct. I'm gonna leave you guys to ponder that one. Uh-oh. We were in an infinite loop for a second. So in 2007, DARPA funded the revolutionizing prosthetics program and two teams. One's at Johns Hopkins University and the other one at DECA Research and Development. They got to play with direct neural integration. So for people that were quadriplegics and those with some compromised systems, they actually got to work with that. On our side, we were tasked with non-invasive strap and go technology. And for us, we had individuals that were transradial and amputee between the elbow and the wrist. Transhumeral, which Chuck is, on the left hand side and amputee between the elbow and the shoulder. And a four quarter or shoulder disarticulation where they're completely missing, which Chuck is, on the right hand side. Now Chuck is really unique in addition to his personality for the fact that he's able to run a transhumeral configuration. He's ran a left full shoulder configuration and a right full shoulder configuration. And we've allowed for mechanical and microprocessor direct integration to make him a bilateral user again for the first time in 35 plus years. 38, I can't count, I don't have my abacus on me. Now, this is a major leap in change. I had the ability to go work for Professor Hugh Hare. And Amy Mullins is an actress, a motivational speaker, a model, and a runner as well. And they were featured in worried magazines. Does anyone know Hugh's story? You do. What do you know about him, sir? You're absolutely right. So Dr. Hare was an awful student and I'm not making fun of him. This is, I'm paraphrasing what he told me when I was working with him. He didn't care about school. He cared about climbing, climbing trees, climbing mountains, climbing ice mountains, climbing anything that he could find himself on. But one day in the white mountains of New Hampshire, he and his climbing partner got trapped in a freak storm. His climbing partner didn't make it. He was rescued in time and airlifted, but the frostbite had set in and he lost both of his feet. So when he got out, he went and got his prostheses and he wasn't happy with what they really came out with and said, I can't climb with these. And just like, well, if you're so smart, why don't you invent something? So he's like, oh yeah. And he went to Harvard, which is a little school in Boston or something like that, I don't know. And he got his PhD. Then he went to MIT and became a professor in the media lab and has been inventing technology since the 90s, not just for amputees, but for able-bodied individuals to be able to, is anyone a runner? Nope. What happens to runners that run on pavement for extended periods of time after years? Where's your loading to stress? Stress factors. Stress factors, right? So talking about technology that uses springs and other things to be able to offset that stress, but still allow the body to work through it and put out its own manpower to have maybe assistive jump technology. Like I would like to be a superhero and do the super-imperial landing at some point and not break all my legs, my hip and my spine, but it's still a pipe dream for me. But that's the kind of technology that they're working on. So this is the gastrosolius complex, which is a fancy word for calf, Achilles tendon, foot, foot stuff. It seems simple, but it's a lot more complicated than you might think, and the amount of power that it can generate and the amount of force that it can absorb is fairly complicated. Traditionally, you've got the feet that look like a U-shape and you, sir, might be able to help us talk about this. I'm not trying to single you out, but I know that a lot of times you see this U-shape foot, can everyone still hear me? And they will step down and press on their heel. Please jump in and grab them out. And they're spring off that propel themselves forward. That's not how we walk. You know, usually it's heel strike, foot clap, roll over, and plant your reflection, which is push-off, right? So this device over here, the Bio, uses a combination of carbon fiber springs as well as a motor to be able to give you that feeling like when you're stepping on a moving walkway or up an escalator. And for those who've experienced it, it's pretty cool. It's also pretty heavy when it's not powered, but you have some trade-offs. I don't know if, sir, I don't know what's your name, but do you mind telling us a little bit about who you are and what you've experienced? Is that any of what I said true, or I'm just making up, Lys? My name's Michael. Yeah, it is true. Yeah, it is true. Everything with the, it also depends on lower and above knee amputation. I'm an above knee amputation, and it's a little bit harder to learn how to walk than a below knee, because you don't have no function of a knee. I lost my leg when I was 14 to cancer, and it was easier to learn when you're younger than when you're older, because you learn things for anything growing up. And then once you, when you're younger, you gotta learn the way it is. But this knee right here, I had a chance to use it one time, and it's much better, and it's more flexible. The one I have is more of a spring kind, and you have to land on the knee and then move forward like yours. Are you running an auto box sea leg? Yes, auto box, yes. Okay. Well, auto box now is that empowered device. That's one of their products now. Yeah, because I'm trying to get into that too. Talk to me afterwards. Let me help you. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate that. How about big hand for Michael? Yes, ma'am. What is your name? And tell us a fun fact about you. So my name is Kate. I'm not an amputee. I have limb difference. And so I have 55 some years of experience of wearing prosthetics. And as you can imagine, it's changed quite a lot. The interesting thing about this kind of foot is that they have, definitely they've got some accelerometers and so on in them. And so they're good at knowing things like, oh, she's walking downstairs now, which is awesome, except they don't know when you get to the last step. So I tried out one about six years ago. I managed to break my other ankle because I got off the bus. And my, you know, when you're walking downstairs, you point your toe, yeah. They had their limitations. And I took it back to the prosthetist. I had it for a month trial. And I took it back and I said, you know, this is just not, it has its limitations. And so part of what you need really in a prosthetic is a certain amount of predictability and some degree of control, because even though I'm pretty good at controlling it, I couldn't predict that it was going to put its toe, it was going to start with a toe and I broke my ankle. So you're a use case that the engineers didn't anticipate figuring out that that could be a problem, right? Exactly. But if you had- That's part of the challenge here, right? It's knowing what's going to, what do people really do with their legs? We all run downstairs. And some, and you know, if you run downstairs in the dark when you can't see that bottom step, you've got a good chance of falling over. And that's what these legs can do for you. I follow her during the day. Mother used to call me Grace and still to this day. So I completely get it and thank you for sharing that. But maybe if you had a group of really intelligent people like this solving problems and you telling them that I, this is where it didn't was a limitation for me and would prevent me from being confident in using this device, maybe they would help you. Sure. I mean, I'm a software engineer and I've done a small amount of hardware stuff as well. So I understand a bit about servers and things like that. I think part of it is the feedback from the human that's lacking with most baloney prosthetics. And it's not the case with upper limb. Upper limb, you need a lot more subtlety. With lower limb, you need a lot more strength. You know, you need the strength and durability. And there's trade-offs. And I've just, it's not to criticize this, right. It's a good step in a good direction. And it felt great walking on the flat. It was an amazing thing. But on stairs, it was a nightmare. Your honest and candid feedback is probably the best thing for those that are working on it and they need to hear it. So thank you very much. And that is being heard. And I can certainly relay that to some of my former coworkers, but it's something that while I was there, we were working on telling them that too, but they had some different priorities. And I understand that with FDA certification, trials of the Decker arm system, as well as the biome. And I was the one who paired it with my team, my clinical team and my patients that volunteered to be pilots to test it with microprocessor niece of different manufacturers. Cause at the time, I walk was independent and only, the only thing that they made was an ankle. So we had to get autobock and how autobock endolite, freedom innovations, all their different needs paired with it to see if we can work. And everyone walks a little bit different. Every socket fit is a little different too. So if you have that compliance, design intended compliance, don't look up the abbreviation for it. But that one is, that one is just one where you want to eliminate that wattage or that moving. I don't know what you guys are laughing about. So, and those things, you are below the knee. Okay. Yeah. And every joint that you go through that you have, you're a little bit better off. No offense to either of you too. But it's, it's a fact, right? That we'd have to live with. All right. So other things too. Yes, sir. Yeah. Yep. Nope. Sure. So that socket works by doing alternating compression or release. Could you, would you mind standing up and can I demonstrate on you? It's going to get a little weird and touchy-feely. If anyone's uncomfortable, please turn away. Can I use your arm for the permission? So just relax your arms this side. So a traditional socket is global encapsulation, right? And we're just making peripheral contact. Yes. Can you tell us what a socket is? Sure. Do you guys demonstrate what a socket is? It's doing a hopper. This is awesome. Do you have sockets on you? So a socket is, you know, what you call like something into an outlet, right? Same idea. So you take you the Riz's Julin, and here's an example of this. I explained it all, huh? You're hot right now. Just step away. So I'm going to have you affect up what I tell you. So I'm going to go do a traditional socket. Now come out affect up towards me. What do you feel is where you're at? In the middle of being gladly outside of here. My finger stayed in contact. He's got a big gun, so I can barely get my hands around it, but I swear it's the same diameter. What happened on the underside, sir? It's loose. So what we do is we take four compression struts, and we go compress along the bones. We re-sweeze, and you allow it softish through these. We're trapping that bone in space. Now add that down again. Now imagine that on your leg. I have some other videos to show you and being able to come up, and I've got X-rays to prove that this works. But that theory and how that feels, is that different than your traditional side? It is, because right now, when I'm using it, the liner, no, it is suction lining. Before I had the pin. So the pin, it was like more of a loose portion. And so I explained suction liners have an expulsion valve, and you squeeze all the air out of it. It's a one-way purge valve, and it pulls you out of there. There's elevated vacuum systems that literally pour in vacuum all the time, because it's so loose it's going to fall off, and there's a lot of weight down there. And a pin lock bind-art is something that looks like a staggered pin that pushes in and clicks in. Right, sir? I would pin. Oh. Yeah, I use a pin. The pin goes in, so it's similar to socket, but the thing that goes into the end, is that it's so awesome. I had the same size as you did for my leg, actually. It was the same size as yours. Yeah, it was probably in the same size, because my leg is tiny. Thank you. Thank you very much. So then, a lot of it is also proximal sporting, where they will speed up tight, or let you set the issue of containment, and sitting on your appreciate and renaissance. We're gonna get, we'll talk more about sockets in a little bit, but I do wanna get through this, and so I've been leaving this up. I've really had a point to this. So sometimes, for anyone interested in the business side of translating some of the technology, or marketing, no? Okay, so then you guys have just been staring at play for the past 10 minutes, great, sorry. But we also have to get creative in getting the message out, and this is my point here. A lot of the amputees, even the veterans, did not know that the bio-empowered ankle existed, so we had to figure out where we could get the message out. Contrary to popular belief, Playboy actually has more articles than pictures of naked ladies, and I didn't know this. But we thought, well, what is their demographic? I think the statistics was in the 70 plus percent, either had military affiliations or direct military ties, and we decided if we put an article out there that was talking not about naked people, but more so about Captain America over here, who was injured when his Humby rolled over an IED and it blew up the right wheel and took off his leg, but he wanted to go back. As an amputee, he outran all the new guys coming in with his prosthetic device, and he was determined, even though they said no, he went back and did two more tours of duty as a tank commander. And it's a message of hope and inspiration, and for him, he wanted to show the others, and this is what Chuck wants to do, and I'm sure some of those that probably shared their stories and their prostheses with you were talking about, and we want to have this conversation. So let's show this real quickly. This is Dr. Hugh Hare, racing Sanjay Gupta, who is a former White House Chief Medical Correspondent, as well as on CNN. On biodesigns, we have some medical research there. So given that this gentleman was demonstrating what we had, we're gonna talk about hacking Batmobiles, right? So this is my niece Sophie. She was two at the time. Looks just like me, right? Blonde hair, blue eyes, cute kid. We decided to hack a Power Wheels that was way too big for her, because she doesn't understand that trees are not her friend. You have to steer. All she knows is that if I step on the gas, I go fast, low gear, stupid, and no one should ever use it, and high gear's where you want to be. Also, because I'm Asian, two of the requirements are that it has to have under-body lights, and it has to drift. Right? So I'm like, okay, we get to build toys. What does this have to do with prosthetics and amputees? I showed you Ethan. He's growing up, and as a teenager, he's getting to be a big boy. It's hard for his parents to do transfers where they have to lift him completely up and transfer him. We're trying to get him into prosthetic devices. We're trying to get him into some adaptive technology where we can really get him out there. So Tony Blanchard is a NASCAR American like myself from North Carolina. He's responsible for the development of Joey DiGliano, who just won the, I'm sorry, the Monster Energy's NASCAR Cup Series, if any of you guys watch that. And then he modified this go-kart, and he hacked the go-kart to do something similar. So his throttle is controlled on the left. So if you watch him now, he's just not even paying attention, just practicing right now. So push down, it's got a potentiometer on there, and back for a break. But we're talking about dignity and freedom re-enabling technology. And the look on his face and how fast he's going while he's trying to run down his sister tells you everything that you need to know whether or not this was a good project or not. All right, so Laurel Koss is not here. We're gonna just talk to you guys in the Q and A sessions about what amputees really want, but she presented her slides there. That's her little boy Ian. She's from Pittsburgh, but I was gonna show them with her here. She's a phenomenal artist, and we had a very funny relationship. I feel like I actually got to go to her wedding and her honeymoon with her in advance without knowing it, because she did things like this about two years beforehand, and drew me every single thing. I feel a little bad for her husband. I don't know if he's seen these yet, but if this is recorded and she sees it, then he might. Okay, so skipping through for these. Chuck! Man of the hour. Please welcome Mr. Chuck Heldreth, Jr. So. So Chuck, you wanna talk to us about this shark and what happened? So after I was started skiing racing, and I went down to the Cayman Islands with my girlfriend, my wife, now, and we're laying on the beach, and I meet this doctor who has a condo down there, and he goes scuba diving all the time, and he goes, well, you could never go snorkeling. Then he came over and asked me what happened, and I said, you know, I was in an electrical accident, and he goes, well, they can have great snorkeling tours right out of the... Right out of the hotel right here. So I sign up and I show up the next morning. There's me and 19 other people standing on the boat, and I'm standing there just in my bathing suit, and I am scarred, basically, from head to toe, and every time I kinda look out of my corner of the eye while the guides are telling us where we're going, we're gonna go over to this shipwreck that went down on the beach, and I'm standing there just in my bathing suit, and we're gonna go over to this shipwreck that went down on the late 1800s, then over to this small reef, and then over to see this other ship that went down on the early 1900s. Every time I kinda look out of my corner of my eye, I see somebody else go, like, oh, I wasn't really looking. Ain't nobody really saying anything to me, so the guy gets done telling us where we're gonna go and what we're gonna do, and he goes, do I have any questions? Well, this one woman kinda goes, well, you know, are we gonna see anything dangerous? And the guide's going, no, no, no, these are some of the safest waters in the Caribbean to dive in snorkeling. And I immediately turned around and I went, yeah, that's what they told me last year. But I said, oh, no, no, I'm just kidding, folks. So now I'm up with one of the guides, and he's diving down, and he's bringing up all this really cool stuff for me to look at, and I look back, and everybody's about 25 feet from the boat. So I can just imagine what happened when the tour guides got to the local bar where they all hang out with all the other tour guides and went, you ain't gonna believe this story. But that's kind of the fun things I like to do is put people on the spot and kind of catch them off guard. Which is, gotta put everybody at ease. The one thing that really drives me nuts is this little kid, he's going, gee, mom, look at that guy. Oh, don't stare at him. I'm like, no, no, it's okay, really. He's curious, he's just a kid. He wants to know what happened, and everything's okay. I'm not ashamed of what I look like or who I am. I just want to let everybody know that it's okay to be in amputee or somebody in a wheelchair or somebody that just is out of place. Everything's okay. So Donna tells us that with her and Chuck's together, they feel like they can do anything together. And whether it's rebuilding a house, remodeling a house, raising two kids that you see here. So this is Colin, there's a doppelganger here. If anyone knows this, please do find them. We saw him at dinner, we weren't stalking him, but dead ringer for him, but he's not here. And their daughter and family, they're both college graduated from college, when I first got to meet them, they were like a big. So we're 10 years ago? Oh, I think it was more than that, Wayne. Oh. So I'm gonna talk about this. What's going on here? Oh, gee, I'm building a little toolbox. So what do engineers like to do? When I get involved with this program, let me see, I was actually brought in for socket technology. Because the main thing with especially the upper arm is being able to wear a prosthetic for any amount of time, there's a lot of problems. The first problem being perspiration. Secondly, you gotta fight gravity. You're always, to hold the arm on, you're always fighting gravity. So when they got involved with that, they said, hey, you wanna go see the robotic arm? And I was like, well, okay. So I went over and they went, wow, that's pretty cool. They go, you wanna try it on? I'm like, yeah. So I get the arm on, and I haven't had anything move over here for about 30 years on its own. And they strapped it on me. I started going, I was jumping out of the way of the arm, I'm like, the system becomes so intuitive that within an hour, two hours or five hours of operation, I was grabbing a piece of wood off the counter, planting it in a vice, clamping it, grabbing a power drill, drilling a hole in it, picking up a sheet rock screw, and using the drill to drill it in, in five hours time. And all the engineers looked and went, oh my god. Did that really just happen? Within 10 hours of operation, I did a demonstration for the heads of DARPA doing the same thing. And they completely thought it was a fluke and they started going, well, we're gonna find some other amputees to see if this is really true. But what the engineers did is they actually made a system that would communicate to 14 different types of inputs that were already available on the market. They also, oh geez, I just lost my train of thought. That's okay. So one of the big things that Chuck brought to us is the laughter, the human factors, the actual making the technology personal to us and making us care of what we did and driving us to make it better. So for those of you that talked and said, like the message is getting through, go talk to them and be relentless about making contact about it. That was one of the things that when Chuck came in and he made us laugh. Well, that was one of the things as I'd come in in the morning and everybody would look up from the desk. On the antisocial? Yes. Until I got there. I started making it at a point every day that I got in to go over and say hi to everybody in the office or everybody that was working on the ant project. So eventually after about a couple of weeks I started to go, oh hi Chuck. It's like, wow, I actually got them to talk to me before I talked to them. Which is really good because I think it goes back to the communication and being able to work as a team. Everybody starting to communicate with each other and not just work on their own. Which I think was very beneficial to them. One, the development of the arm, but also to benefited the people that were working with me. And it pushed us to do things like this and we would be doing a demonstration which we'll do later in private. But we're at a hacking convention and he's running a arm system with wireless communication. Probably not the best thing, but I want to talk about the labs and invite you guys there and Chuck we'll get the chance to talk more about this. Go ahead Chuck. You're good. Okay. So Chuck, what's going on here? What is this thing? What we found is if he focuses on just grabbing, pulling, he's most effective. You're telling me. Yeah, what that is is called a parachute. So everybody goes, hey, I get a parachute, ha ha. And I don't jump out of planes. I'd like to, but I can't. We're going to. But what the parachute does is it's a sock that goes over my stump that is made out of a very slick material or silk like that one. And what it does is it pulls all my soft tissue down into the socket and allows the compression struts kind of grasp my arm. And this gives me so much more stability with this high five socket is what it's called. And, but it gives me direct control of the arm. And I actually was sitting down to lunch one day sitting across from a fellow amputee and I dropped my fork with my body-powered prosthetic. And because of the control that I had with the high five socket, I caught the fork before it hit the ground. In the other arm amputee, he looked over at me and I said, did you see that? And he goes, yeah, we're not going to talk about that right now because he was, he's a very capable upper arm prosthetic user and just was flabbergasted at the control I had. On the note of eating, can you tell them what it felt like when you were able to do this? Well, first time in 38 years, I cut up my own dinner. And I sat there and said, yeah, this is pretty cool. And I said, you know, it's not, seems kind of trivial. And I was sitting on my computer going over some stuff and waited that night and I looked and said, no, that was awesome. Yeah, we're going to not tell them about what you've, the first thing you wanted to do when you got home with your arm. No. Anyways, so we're going to talk about the challenge at Hanson Lab. Why don't you guys just, I've never laughed at so much. Yeah, I haven't. Anyways, we have a problem. So it's hot outside. When Chuck, what happens to you during the summer? Oh, first off, I've lost both arms to prespire, the radiators. So most amputees, especially double amputees, whether it's legs or arms, always are much hotter than the average person. So of course, perspiration is one of those factors that are detrimental to us to be able to wear a prosthetic, operate a prosthetic, and it becomes very challenging to maneuver them. So one of the things that we, as amputees, need things to cool us down, things that will help us be able to wear our prosthetics longer. The other scenario is weight. The more less is more in our situations. And there's that fine line between having not enough and having too much, not enough support, too much for the body to handle. So I'm gonna turn it over to the girls to introduce the thermal lens lab project. I'm going to try to get into the process. I'm gonna try this again. I might have to paraphrase. So these girls are seventh graders who have that, project, the National Invention Convention. There you see they hacked a ski boot heater and put it on there. So Wilmer Hale is putting the entire belt for the provisional patent as well as a full patent. And they want to take this not only to heating amputees in the winter, but also cooling them down. So what we're gonna do just like Apollo 13 is take a lot of those components. Anyone have a high-power computing rig? Sorry. Anyone have a high-power computing rig? Okay, so liquid cooling system, muffin fans, raspberry pies, lots of cool toys to play with. We're gonna build Chuck a new socket in the next three hours starting at four o'clock in Melrose, one is I believe is where the lab is. And we would like to invite you to join us. And if you're making significant contributions we want to acknowledge you on the patent. We are gonna be thanking our sponsors and posting the information about what we did online because they bought a lot of the equipment. They got Chuck and Donna out here and they allowed us to talk to you. So, we're running low on time, but again, please stop us if you have questions. My contact info is there. We want you to work with clinicians and amputees in your community. Don't be afraid to engage in a conversation with them. Share your projects with us. And lastly, as I saw online recently, we should always be in the business of helping people. The kindness we've put out there into the world always finds a way of coming back to us. So, be kind to each other. Believe in yourselves and the good people that you choose to surround yourselves with. Don't be on an island by yourself and be so wrongly like I was, okay? This is way more fun. Thank you guys so much for coming to this presentation. Does anyone have any questions? I know we're gonna be swapping out here. And thank you very much for letting us go over. What made you, what was the impetus that made you decide which one's going to have the hand and which one's gonna have the, what is this called? I'm sorry? The... This is a... Claw. Claw. So how do you decide which one's the hand and which one's the hook? Is it just usage or how does that work? Yes. So what it is is that they looked at what I had for amputation. And I'm a four quarter amputation on the right, meaning I've lost the collarbone, the shoulder blade. I only have a rib cage over there. So I've been unilateral for 38, 37 years. And this is the first time that I've been able to do bilateral tasks since my accident when I was 18 years old. That's why I have the right full robotic prosthetic. What it does is it gives me the range. I have a full shoulder in, out, back, forth. Same with the elbow. The elbow is full motion of up, down, in, out, 270 degree rotation of the wrist, flexion extension built into the wrist with radial deviation built into that. I have all five fingers move. Tackle feedback in the thumb so I can tell how tightly I'm grabbing things. But this prosthetic hook is a great compliment because it allows me to have an interaction where I'm doing bilateral tasks, which again, since 1981 I have not been able to do that. But they both have their pluses and their minuses. This allows me to pick up very small things that if I need to, using a pair of tweezers. I've actually used chopsticks with the robotic in and combining them to do tasks like eating, building things, yeah, building, yeah, it's a great story. I get involved with the engineers at Decker and they said, what's an engineer I wanna do? First thing you do, they bring me to the hobby store. And they start grabbing stuff off the wall, while Wayne did. Okay, we get back, okay, you gotta build this. So the first thing I pick out is this punch out wood parts to build a catapult. So I'm sitting there and I'm working. And I'm working and all of a sudden he's on this computer doing stuff and I look down and I just start cracking up laughing. And Wayne looks up and he goes, what are you laughing at? And I said, I feel like a two-year-old. I had glue everywhere. It was on all the pieces, the tables. Understate, carpet. You're right. But once I finally did get it built, it was really cool because we double up the rubber band so it had more power. Of course you gotta have more power. And we started out with marshmallows and then we graduated throwing Skittles and then we got this brainstorm and said, what about a ball bearing? And yeah, the ball bearing, we put it in there and it let it go and it flew across the room and hit a metal plate on a junction box of electricity and dented it. We were like, so we didn't do that anymore. We went back to marshmallows, occasional Skittles. I think we threw a Skittle pretty good too, but I mean, people always are going, well, what can you do with your arm? And I said, I don't know yet. I haven't done it. And that's really the key to this arm. It's an evolutionary process of learning just like a two-year-old, learning how to use their hands and how to cut up meat and how to use a pair of scissors. I think we have time for just one more question. If anyone else wants to ask anything, even if you don't want to work in the lab, it just will be right next door for getting in a work line. You can ask all that you want. So yes. Are there sensors involved, like neurological? He, I know you were kind of talking about earlier. Are they all involved? Or, I don't know if this is just proprietary, but I'm just kind of curious how, what's the like process from getting to his, from his brain to the end, like the entire. The first is to visit Chuck and think about it and do it, which is a task. But for him, this is all external strapping of technology with off-the-shelf, on it, so EMG, surface mounted electrodes. You can take that, you can signal processing, or as well as strapping of the nuts, that I am using on his feet. So just another, you're filming on each floor. Those tops, they are in just process. Four abs, left, right, rotations. And now you have a plethora of controls to be able to remap on to there. I compare it to driving like an excavator. So my feet are running the two controls that would run the boom of an excavator. And depending on which way I tilt my foot, actually operates the, I also have, I'm not sure that what the correct term is, where I can have angle movement, so I get to, I can get the arm to move in a, joint multi-control back, right? So if he goes in the diagonal, that's what's really cool about being able to put it on an ideal. You can get simultaneous motion in two different. So I can go up or down in vertically at the same time, which is kind of cool, and. All right, so I think that's our time. Thank you guys so much.