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DARPA-HARD
Jonathan Kuniholm, an Iraq veteran who lost his arm in 2005, is one of 300 engineers working on DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 program, which was created to solve the thorny interdisciplinary problems that stand in the way of creating truly functional prosthetic arms.
DARPA-HARD
Jonathan Kuniholm, an Iraq veteran who lost his arm in 2005, is one of 300 engineers working on DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 program, which was created to solve the thorny interdisciplinary problems that stand in the way of creating truly functional prosthetic arms.
PROTO 1
Before his Marine reserve unit was called, Kuniholm had been working on a biomedical engineering Ph.D. at Duke University, in Durham, N.C. After the loss of his arm, Kuniholm changed his academic focus to prosthetics and joined the Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 project. Here he wears an early prototype arm created by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., the organization that leads the DARPA effort.
REVOLUTION ROAD
Revolutionizing Prosthetics team leader Stuart Harshbarger of APL [right] has shepherded the worldwide project since its inception in 2005. To date, DARPA has spent $71.2 million on the project, and that number could soon reach $100 million.
STATE OF THE ART
Kuniholm’s current prosthesis has aircraft cables and rubber bands that enable him to open the hook with a shrug of his shoulder. The design has not changed much since World War II: Carbon fiber and titanium have replaced the wood and steel of the original design.
AIR GUITAR HERO
The Revolutionizing Prosthetics effort goes beyond simply building an arm. Special software trains amputees to take full advantage of the DARPA arm’s fine motor control capabilities. Here, Kuniholm practices Air Guitar Hero, a version of Guitar Hero that has been modified by the engineers at APL to help amputees learn how to move the arm’s fingers individually.
