Three Marcus High School students recently won a $50,000 prize for creating a brain-controlled bionic prosthetic leg.
Chanyoung Kim, Eeshaan Prashanth and Samuel Skotnikov won the Gordon E. Moore Award for Positive Outcomes for Future Generations from the Society for Science at the 75th Annual Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair. Their project, called Neuroflex, could make robotic limbs easier to use and less expensive, according to the Society for Science.
“The team started by measuring the walking motion of their classmate, Aiden, with his usual prosthetic leg,” the organization said in a statement. “They saw that the prosthetic’s stiffness forced the remaining part of his amputated leg to work much harder than his other leg. They designed their prosthetic leg, Neuroflex, to read the wearer’s brain signals through an EEG headband. The signals tell Neuroflex how the wearer wants to move, and Neuroflex uses its motors to support that movement. They also designed an ankle with more realistic joints. When the team tested their prototype on Aiden, it guessed the right movement 98% of the time.”
Click here for more information about the project.
