Three students at Marcus High School in Texas won a $50,000 prize for creating a brain-controlled bionic prosthetic leg for people with transfemoral amputations. Samuel Skotnikov, Chanyoung Kim, and Eeshaan Prashanth received 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 this month.
The team started by measuring the walking motion of their classmate, Aiden, with his usual prosthetic leg and found that the device’s stiffness forced the muscles of Aiden’s residual limb to work much harder than his other leg. The team designed the prosthesis, Neuroflex, to read the wearer’s brain signals through an EEG headband that signals how the wearer wants to move and Neuroflex uses its motors to support that movement. The team also designed a prosthetic ankle with more realistic joints.
When Aiden tested the prototype, it predicted the correct movement 98 percent of the time.
To read more about the project, visit the Society for Science website.
https://isef.net/project/enbm062t-non-invasive-brain-controlled-bionic-leg
