Dean Kamen: New prosthetic arm for veterans
I’m going to inaugurate this blog with a post about an amazing man, Dean Kamen. The first time I had a chance to see him speak in person was at the 2006 NIWeek conference. He spoke of the process of invention and the ideas of some in upper management that think that invention and creativity is something that can be “managed” and has a predictable life cycle.
I found his talk enlightening because it gave some insight into the mind of a man that is truly an innovator of our times. Here are just two of the many slides he presented.
It’s possible that at the same time he gave this presentation, Dean was already working on his next innovation. Dean spoke at the TED conference and presented this preview of an extraordinary prosthetic arm at the request of the US Department of Defense.
This video clip taken at TED shows Dean explaining how he came around to eventually accepting the DOD challenge. It shows how empathetic Dean is to the human spirit and how he’s trying to help ease some of the suffering these soldiers are going through. In the world of robotics, the requirements imposed on the development of this prosthetic arm were an extreme challenge. The final demonstration in this video makes it look so easy.
