Photograph of the Echelon foot courtesy of Endolite.
The Echelon® foot by Chas A Blatchford & Sons, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England, is being recognized by top forces in English engineering. On April 21, it won a 2010 Queen’s Award for Enterprise-Innovation, with a citation for “Continuous Innovation.” Business Link calls the awards “the most prestigious corporate awards that any UK business can win.” Then, on May 10, the foot was named one of the four finalists for the 2010 Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award, which is worth a gold medal and £50,000. The MacRobert award, which was presented in 2008 to Touch Bionics, Livingston, Scotland, for the i-LIMB, recognizes an invention for three qualities: innovation, commercial success, and benefit to the community. It is open to all U.K.-based companies, including university spin-offs. The winner of the prize will be announced on June 7.
The foot, with its hydraulic ankle that controls dorsiflexion and plantarflexion, was designed by a Blatchford team including Technical Director Professor Saeed Zahedi, OBE; Principal Mechanical Design Engineer Graham Harris; Senior Hydraulic Design Engineer Fadi Abimosleh; Senior Mechatronic Design Engineer David Moser, PhD; and Principal Research Prosthetist Joe McCarthy, all based in Basingstoke.
