Project Details
Focus: Above The Knee Amputees / MPK Prosthetics
Period: Thesis Semester 2017
Mentor: Leonie Slattery
Untethered is a Prosthetic Attachment* that recharges electronic prosthetics by converting the user's movement into electrical energy.
*Designed and developed as a thesis project during my Bachelor's studies in Ideation Design (Design Thinking).
An extensive mind map was made to highlight the major areas the project would address over the thesis period. It was also the blueprint for the written thesis.
To validate the notion of harvesting energy from biomechanical energy, a piezoelectric footpad was developed for testing. However, the energy produced was so minuscule, another method had to be developed.
As it wasn't possible to directly modify one of the interviewee's prosthetic knee, a prototype knee attachment that can recharge phones by harvesting the wearer's biomechanical energy was designed and developed.
The attachment had a prominent shaft that drove a gear train that exponentially amplifies the RPMs going into a brushless motor-generator.
The final design was meant to be open source by publicly providing the design files to people to retrofit the system to work with their prosthesis. However, that proved to be too challenging for the average person. In the future, I want to develop a script that automates the process based on given user dimensions.
What's Next
Although Untethered have been nominated and won multiple young designer awards, I believe that the scope and the outcome of the project have not reached its full potential.
As a result, I dedicated the past two years to advance my skills, resources, and education. While not confirmed yet, my Master's Thesis for my Industrial Medical Design studies may again focus on prosthetics.
Currently, I'm reinvestigating if MPK's poor battery life remains an issue and perhaps exploring the amputee community for any other unaddressed problems.
