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A.B.L.E. Tech: Achieving Better Life Experiences for People with Injury, Disability and Aging Challenges Through 21st Century Technologies

Moderator: John Hockenberry
Hugh Herr SM '93 Dean Kamen: June 6, 2007; Running Time: 1:31:47

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

Imagine a time when technology trumps injury and disease, and the very notion of disability begins to fade. These panelists suggest that we are at the dawn of such an era.

John Hockenberry, who zips around the stage in his flashing light –equipped wheelchair, tells us that “vast, extraordinary and sometimes frightening physical change can instead of being feared … actually be embraced and become an opportunity for people to take authorship of their own lives, using products and tools made by technology to make their life experiences better.” He sees an aging and longer-lived demographic necessitating new and better devices, and the likelihood that such tools may find broader use among a larger, able-bodied population.

Hugh Herr lost both legs below the knee to frostbite while hiking Mt. Washington in 1982. But his drive to climb compelled him to invent replacements that from his perspective far surpass the clumsy, skin-colored prostheses generally available. Herr demonstrates his biomechanical inventions, which provide not only a natural gait but additional energy to each stride – like an airport walkway, he says. Herr believes with some tweaking, his device could help stroke victims walk with better balance, and that the advantage conferred by such a device could make it desirable beyond the disabled population – think physical improvement by way of robotics, rather than steroids. As technology once intended exclusively for disabled people finds wider applications, there will be a transformation, says Herr, which “creates a world where there is not disability, but in fact augmentation. It makes it sexy. It’s the muscle car.”

Dean Kamen performs astonishing pirouettes in his iBOT, a device inspired by his desire to give wheelchair users the same view of the world taken for granted by those able to stand. This machine can give physically challenged people the independence to climb stairs, take a walk in the woods or at the beach.

Kamen also presents, through video clips, breathtaking developments in a robotic artificial arm – the result of U.S. government efforts to fast track (in two years!) a state-of-the-art prosthesis for victims of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nerve and muscle-sensing electrodes enable this arm to pick up small blocks, pieces of paper, and rotate at the wrist. Without government funding, this device would not have been developed, Kamen notes, due to market limitations. Kamen himself subsidizes development of other high tech tools for disabled people (his more lucrative day job involves making insulin pumps and stents). While he’d like these technologies to become “a killer app among people who can pay,” Kamen says, “We will continue to fund them with the naïve notion that it’s the right thing to do, and hope that we will meet our original objective of making the world a better place.”

Lecture Details

Location: Kresge Auditorium

“We’re talking about using these tools to fundamentally change what it means to be human. That will probably upset a lot of people. It doesn’t upset me. I think it’s extraordinarily exciting. It’s natural. It’s moving beyond Darwinian evolution and going into this evolution of human and machine. Where this will take us is only bounded by physical law and our own creativity.”

Hugh Herr

About the Speakers

Moderator: John Hockenberry

Distinguished Fellow, MIT Media Lab
Host, The Takeaway, WNYC Radio, PRI

John Hockenberry is a four-time Peabody Award winner, four-time Emmy award winner, and has won an Edward R. Murrow award and a Casey Medal. Hockenberry served as a correspondent for Dateline NBC after a fifteen-year career in broadcast news at both National Public Radio and ABC News.

He is the author of the novel A River Out Of Eden, and Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs and Declarations of Independence, a memoir of life with a disability. In 1996, Hockenberry performed a successful limited run of Spokeman, a one-man, off-Broadway show he wrote.
Parade Magazine on the 15 year anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and is a contributing editor for WIRED Magazine and METROPOLIS.

Hugh Herr SM '93

Associate Professor, MIT Media Lab

Hugh Herr ME '93 is also an assistant professor, MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology; and director of the Biomechatronics Group at the MIT Media Lab.

Herr's Biomechatronics research group applies principles of muscle mechanics, neural control, and human biomechanics to guide the designs of biomimetic robots, human rehabilitation devices, and augmentation technologies that amplify the endurance and strength of humans.

He has built elastic shoes that increase aerobic endurance in walking and running. In the field of human rehabilitation, Herr's group has developed gait adaptive knee prostheses for transfemoral amputees and variable impedance ankle-foot orthoses for patients suffering from drop foot, a gait pathology caused by stroke, cerebral palsy, and multiple sclerosis.

Herr received his B.A. in physics from Millersville University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT, and a Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University. Prior to coming to the Media Lab, Herr was assistant professor at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School.

Dean Kamen

Chairman of Segway, LLC
Founder of For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST)

Dean Kamen holds more than 150 U.S. and foreign patents, many of them for innovative medical devices. In 1976 he founded his first medical device company, AutoSyringe, Inc., to manufacture and market pumps. At age 30, he sold that company to Baxter International Corporation. He then founded DEKA Research & Development Corporation. Recent projects have included the HomeChoice™ dialysis machine, developed for Baxter (Design News’ 1993 Medical Product of the Year), and the INDEPENDENCE™ IBOT™ Mobility System, also developed for Johnson & Johnson. A decade ago Kamen founded FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), which uses marketing and media techniques to motivate the next generation to learn about science and technology. Among the honors received by Kamen: The Kilby Award, which celebrates those who make extraordinary contributions to society; the Heinz Award in Technology, the Economy and Employment; and the National Medal of Technology, awarded by President Clinton in 2000 for inventions that have advanced medical care worldwide, and for innovative and imaginative leadership in awakening America to the excitement of science and technology.