thank you. when i was younger, i alwaystook apart everything i got. just a few years ago, i finally learnedhow to put everything back together, and everything took off from there. when i was 14, i came up with this idea,
3d printing when was it invented, it was to create a robotic hand,controlled by a wireless control glove. now, i was 14, this wasa pretty far-fetched idea for me. it was one of the most practical ideasi've had so far, but i had no ideahow to make this into reality.
i turned to the internet,and i instantly found a lot of sites that really promoted learningand made learning fun and easy. these site include sparkfun,instructables, hackaday just to name a few. >from there, i started actually building. as you can see,i started using electrical tubing, a lot of electric tape,and legos as supports. that's just what i had of laying around,and i want to make use of it. i like to work fast,and this is the [result] of it.
so throughout learning,it was a challenge. i live in a small townin colorado so i'm very limited. i don't have big universitiesto go into and ask questions. i had the internet and my bedroomto make everything out. for example, for the flex sensorson the control glove. i first learned how to wirethose up to a micro controller. then write code for them and getall the raw signal values from those. convert that into motor signals, and thenactually move something with that. then add it at wireless radiosand make everything work in unison.
if you times that by five, you get individual finger controlof a whole hand. now, i didn't stop there. i wanted to make something bigger,better, and more functional. i started learning modeling software, and i wanted to get this made physically. i was going to go at cnc millingor something like that, and just the cost was outrageous. so there was this new, evolving technology
that started coming into playwhich was 3d printing. i sent this to a few companies, and i was getting quotes upwardsof 500 dollars just to print the hand. this was the point where i almost quit, i didn't have 500 dollars to putinto something that could just fail. so i really looked around and tried to usemy resources as much as possible. i had a friend that lived in new york,and he worked at a 3d printing company, and he had a printer of his own,and he threw it on one night, and i had to pay for shipping.
so this is really the spark of this. you know, contributingand making everything possible. i wanted to increase functionality,and with that you need stronger motors, and better electronics, and everything. i was 16 at the time. i didn't havea whole lot of money to put into this. i pretty much had the moneyfrom working over the summer, and so i had to find compromises between different technologies,different motors, and incorporate it all into one system.
so i needed an extremely high torque motorwith a really precise feedback system, and that alone already sounds expensive. what i ended up doing wasi used a dc motor with a gearbox, a really beefy gearbox to really getthe maximum torque out of a simple motor, and i put a potentiometerat the end of the shaft. a potentiometer is what'sfound in light dimmers. so again, keeping the cost extremely lowand increasing functionality. so in the end, i builtthis robotic arm up to the shoulder, which was extremely strong.
it could toss balls to you,it could shake your hand, it could pretty much do anythinga human could if you programmed it correctly. >from there, i entered thisinto the science fair in colorado, and at the state science fair,i kind of had an aha-moment. this seven-year-old girl came up to me, and she had a prosthetic limbfrom the elbow to the fingertip; one motion and one sensor. i started talkingto her parents more about it,
and just that alone was 80,000 dollars which is a lot of money for anyone. and i could see the distress,talking to her parents, because that is a lot of money,and the thing was that she was 7, so she'd probably need abouttwo or three of those in her lifetime. and that was the aha-moment for me. i could take what i was are you doing,transfer that directly into prosthetics, add a control system, and it could have the potential
to save, to make lifethat much more enjoyable for amputees and otheralready prosthetic users. there are other prosthetics in the market. the main control system for the neweradvanced ones are all neural implants, which is an open spinal surgery,which is extremely dangerous. it's an open spinal surgery,where they implant sensors enter your spinal cordthat pick up your neurons. that's dangerousand also costs a lot of money; i don't have money to do thatso i wanted to find a compromise.
i started looking around.i wanted to keep everything external. i wanted to get rid of all the surgeries,and just have something simple that you could put on every day,take off whenever you need to; concealed within something that's easy. this is the eeg headset. this reads about 10 differentchannels of your brain, and with this, you can do a lot. this is all wireless,it actually uses bluetooth. so this is the newer armthat this actually controls,
and although it's only sendingdata a few inches, that adds to the prosthetic, that eliminates the wiresgoing from your head to the arm, and for prosthetic users, that'sa big psychological aspect to it all. now, the cost-- the cost for prosthetics is outrageous. the newer ones, i don't even wantto say the price of that. i was able to makethis whole physical arm that has the samefunctionality as a human arm,
the same degrees of freedom, and almost the same strength,which is extreme, and i was able to makethis whole physical model with this whole neural control systemfor right about 400 dollars. a lot of-- (applause) and i could guess that a lot of the phones in your pocketsright now will cost more than that. (laughter)
i was able to make this so cheapand affordable because of 3d printing. actually, i havetwo 3-d printers in my room where i'm able to make each individual part,each individual fingertip, and that's what really setsthis apart from anybody else, is that i can make custom gearboxes. i can really increase the functionalitywithin a few days of just prototyping, and finding new ways,and new technologies to incorporate this. now, with prosthetics,there's an appearance issue.
some of you might want this really cool-looking,futuristic robotic arm as a limb, and others want somethingthat looks, and feels, and looks just like a human armskin-wise and everything. and that's what 3d printinghas allowed me to do, create really organic-looking objects,and fingers, and the whole shape,the whole basic shape of it all. so that makes it easyto put silicone skin around it, and that also decreases cost,because it requires less silicone,
and also makes it look more human-like. there were some innovationsthat i used within this. 3d printing usually comes outwithin layers, it looks kind of choppy, and what i actually did was i heated acetone up to 110⺠cwhere it starts to vaporize. i collected that vapor, and i had itcondense onto the 3d printed objects. that gives ita really clean, glossy finish. and it sounds very dangerous. i actuallydid this in my bedroom with mason jars. something about my bedroom--
it's already startingto change people's lives. this is really becoming practicalin the real world applications. prosthetics isthe main application for this, and there's a lot that this can change. i'm already working on newer hands, which currently i haveall the motors within a forearm. i have a new design where all the motors were concealedwithin the palm of the hand, still the same size,
and i get over twicethe strength of what i have now, already that i can almostsurpass human strength. already i'm looking at over 50 poundsof torque per finger, which is extreme. well, almost dangerous extreme. actually, currently, i'm livingin houston working at nasa, i'm part of the robonaut project. transferring a lot of this technologyto what they're doing, and i'm not stopping there,i want to help people. this has turned into somethingthat started from boredom
into somethingthat could change people's lives. already i have plansto help the deaf hear, and i have a little side project, there's this boy at my schoolthat was in an accident, and he was paralyzed from the waist down, and there's a 2% chancethat he'll walk again. my goal is to createan exoskeleton pair of legs for him so he can actually walk for graduation. my goal is to help people--
yes, it's really turning into somethingthat i never expected. i believe this is the future,and this is just the start of it, and what's got me here is curiosity.
curiosity is in every part of us,and it's what makes the world go round, and that's why we're here today. so i challenge youto challenge the system, to look beyond all the boundaries,and to be curious.
