 I'm now joined on the sofa by researchers from the University College London, so welcome. Who are you and what are you exhibiting today? Well, I'm Professor Tamar Macon. We're actually now in Cambridge University, MSc Commission Brain Unit, and together with Danny, who's been my collaborator for the last four years, we run research on augmentation. So, motor augmentation aims to enhance people's bodies, suppressing beyond the flesh and blood limitations that we were born with in order to allow people to do more with their bodies. And Danny, who would introduce herself with this look. Hi, I'm Danny Claude. I'm a designer, and I designed the third thumb, which is a 3D printed augmentation device for the hand. It's controlled with the toes, if you guys can see. So, we've got pressure sensors underneath my big toes, and I'm doing the two degrees of freedom of the third thumb. The third thumb was my graduate work from my masters at the Royal College of Art, where I made my first prototype. I'm now probably on prototype 350, and started collaborating with Tamar after she saw it online, actually. Wow, what a cool collaboration. So tell us more about how it works then. So you've got your thumb, your toe is what's controlling it. Yes, yes, so I've got little pressure sensors underneath my big toes inside my shoes, and this speaks to these kind of little computer chips around my ankles, which then wirelessly connects to up here. And this is all just battery packs, because batteries are the challenging big devices. And then that's connected to motors on the wrist, which is controlling this is some. But yeah, design everything myself and 3D print everything. So we're actually on our stand, we've got our 3D printer that I print all the thumbs with. Great, amazing. So why did you want to come up with something like this? What was the inspiration? Yeah, so I designed prosthetic arms as well. So I worked with the alternative limb project also, and I really wanted to understand what it was like to, I wanted to investigate the relationship that forms between the wearer and a prosthesis. It's a really unique product, and it's kind of really unique relationship forms. And I wanted to experience it for myself, so very much just wanted to try it out for myself first, on my master's project. And then I didn't realise how much of an impact it could have in neuroscience research. So prostheses are either robotic or non-electronic devices or items that we have on our bodies that represent a new limb or a replacement limb, right? Yeah, so the two main areas I guess are congenital one-handers, so people born with one arm or no arms, or people who have suffered a loss of an arm. And those are very different kind of people to design prosthetics for, and we actually researched them in the lab as well. Yeah, so how does your research sort of interact with yours? So when I first met Danny, I got a great big funding grant in order to explore what happens to the human brain when we start controlling a body part we've never had before, because there's very rich, complicated questions. For example, if you use your toes in order to control a certain thumb together with your hand, is your toe going to become more like a hand? And then if you need to use it again, it's like a toe. For example, when you're walking home, are you going to be a bit more clumsy? So there's lots of questions about how the brain adapts to controlling this new body part and how it finds a way to do it very efficiently. And with that question in mind, I was looking for a collaborator. And for me as a neuroscientist, I wanted a technology that is very versatile, so people could do whatever they want with it, not just what we can do in the lab. And really important for me that people can take it home with them and use it throughout the day. And the only technology that was at that level of versatile readiness was coming from Danny. So what sort of findings have you observed, then, in terms of how people's brains adapt to having, in this case, a third thumb? So we've learned so much since starting to work with Danny. One really important result for us is that if you use your thumb, Danny can demonstrate, if you use your thumb together with your hand, you can grasp objects with various fingers and configurations. And that means that you're changing radically the way you use your own hand in daily life. And we found that this has direct impact on how the brain represents the hand because you're radically changing the way you use your hand. In other studies, we were trying to understand how the brain learns to create this collaboration between the toes and the hand, and we've learned that it comes up with really creative ways to substitute the information in this gap between the feet and the hand. We're running a lot of research with fMRI to look at how the brain responds, and here we're really lucky because Danny has designed for us a thumb that is MRI-safe, so we actually put people in the scanner and see how they control the thumb. If it's the first time they control it, if they control it after they've learned to use it and become experts. And how long does that learning take? So this is what we're studying in diverse society this week. So we set up a little challenge, which is can anyone learn to use the thumb within one minute or less? We've got two sizes. I've made some kid-sized ones as well, especially for the Royal Society. And we've got some later ones as well. So far we looked at, I think, 400 visitors, and only three out of the 400 was unable to learn to use the thumb within a minute. Wow, gosh, so will you take that data and make that scientific and publish this research? Absolutely. This is where we really get to benefit from the Royal Society, not just by exposing people to our ideas and the importance of this technology and introducing people to this really novel technology and consequences on the brain, but we can also get a little something back for the scientific community. Absolutely. So what have some of the public's reactions been to suddenly having an extra thumb? It's been good. The reactions are always quite fun. It's always the little kids that are really not quite sure at the start, but they absolutely love it by the end. We've had lots of questions. We've also got a 3D printer printing, and everyone picks it up so well, and I'm really enjoying it, which is great. What sort of questions have people asked you? I've kind of been more about it by the 3D printer, and I can't think of anything on my head. So for us, people are really keen to understand if we want to control the thumb directly with our thoughts with the brain. And to this I say, I really don't, because if we want to create invasive technology, we need to first get into the brain, because unfortunately the technology that we have right now that is non-invasive just doesn't pick up enough information, and I'm really not keen to cut people open. And what's more, I think there's so much more we can do with our bodies that we're not exploiting for technologies such as rehabilitation technologies, that I think we have a lot more to explore before we need to give up and go into invasive solutions. So I, for one, am really excited to tell them your brain controls your trolls, so therefore the brain controls the thumb. Absolutely, just going via the toes. So what is your hope then for this research for the third thumb? What are you hoping to achieve? Well, I've taken it to a couple of different conferences. One in particular was REACH, which is kids with upper limb difference. So I actually kind of gave the thumb to lots of different kids with different kinds of hands. It kind of helped to extend the functionality of their hand to working perhaps with patient groups like that. We're also excited to perhaps explore stroke patients as well in terms of either augmenting their hand that they have the best control over or additionally help with rehabilitation in terms of the control of the thumb as well. Also, temporary immobilisation such as breaking a wrist. We have options for augmentation like crutches when you break an ankle, but when you break a wrist there's not so many options. So we're excited, especially with all this research, we're getting that it's so easy to pick up so quickly. It would be great for those temporary groups as well. In terms of the hardware, you mentioned this is one iteration of the prototype that you've been developing over a long period of time. What are the challenges in terms of creating something like this? I've spoken to a couple of my robotics friends and even if you're working on something like this, which is kind of on the low end, because it's in terms of money, because I'm 3D printing everything myself, but as opposed to 100,000 pounds worth of robotics engineering, we still suffer with the same problems such as motor strength over size, battery power and size, and especially wearable components as well. Everything has to be external to the body as opposed to with the prosthetic arm designs, you get to hide everything within this area, which is usually used as empty. We've got the socket here, then the hand, and then there's more space internally. So augmentation and wearable technology is always so challenging, and then obviously making sure the body fits everything. Would you like to try a mechanic version? We've just got a little manual one. By 10, like so. Perfect. So this is just to give you a sense of how it feels like to have an extra finger. It's quite comfy. The pulleys you have here are to control two main degrees of freedom. So it's across the hand and up and down. Yes. Got you. It's flexion extension across the hand and abduction towards the finger. OK, so that one goes that way, and this one goes this way. Amazing. You did both at the same time. So imagine this would have been normally controlled with your toes. Yeah, I got you. I'm surprised that people can learn this in a minute. That's very impressive. It's much easier, much more intuitive with the toes. Really, the brain could sort of... That's really interesting. Yeah, because at the moment my other hand is involved in controlling. Doing something very non-intuitive for the hand. Yeah, exactly. But it moves really nicely in these... Sorry, and try to meet your other fingers as well. So that's kind of one of the main tasks, which is finger opposition, because we want you to collaborate with the digits. We find that people, when they first try, they really just want to focus on using the thumb by itself, which is obviously something we don't normally do with our fingers. We always kind of work together, two or three fingers together to do something. Yeah. Oh, it's beautiful. It's really nicely made as well. I love these. Oh, thank you. The kind of hinges here, really clever. Yeah, so it's all printed in one piece. Wow, really. And it must be quite quick to print them as well. Yeah, about eight to ten hours. Very impressive. Yeah, which is quite quick for 3D printing. It doesn't sound very fast. Wow, thank you so much for coming to show us this. Yeah, and good luck with your research. I can't wait to see what you come up with next. Thank you. Thank you.