Photograph courtesy of BionicM.
A robotic prosthetic knee by BionicM, Tokyo, won the Red Dot: Luminary 2020 Award, the highest award in the Design Concept category. Design magazine Domus called the knee “the perfect sum of design and biomedical engineering.”
“I think that design is very important in a high-tech product like the robotic prosthetic knee joint because people focus on appearance,” BionicM’s CEO Sun Xiaojun said in an interview with Red Dot. Xiaojun is also a prosthesis user. “Especially in the prosthesis field, the traditional product looks very poor in appearance. So, we focus on design to create high function, a beautiful and cooler product,” he said.
“The Robotic Prosthetic Knee completely changes the concept of prostheses up to now. It is the fusion of body neural information and robot technology,” said Red Dot juror Kazuo Tanaka. “As a result, the user can obtain a natural walking sensation that is completely different from that of a conventional artificial leg. What’s more, its appearance is fashionable and gives the user confidence.”
