Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
we live in a built
World engineering and Technology built
upon Innovations and inventions
stretching back thousands of years some
of our Creations like machines boost our
body's abilities others help us reach
outside our comfort zones we have left
an indelible mark on the planet and now
the time has come to use our skills to
make a better world like turbocharging
the ancient sling the idea is 50,000
years old to launch satellites in a way
we've never done
before a device that boosts our sense of
touch to share a dance I felt I was
moving along with you begin or Aid in
movement a machine to boost a human
experience
and inspire a new generation oh my gosh
so good or even recreating a sense good
to go to replace something that was lost
that was the first time in years that I
had a sensation a
vision building stuff boost
it right now on Nova
[Music]
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[Music]
Earth is home to more than 8 billion
people living in a world full of human
invention certainly in our modern world
we don't really appreciate how saturated
with engineering it is every pen you
pick up to write something with has been
engineered the paper on which you write
has been
engineered humans are engineers at heart
you see a problem and then you identify
a solution and we've been doing that
forever this thing we call engineering
what is it where does this impulse to
make things come
from anthropologists tell us that the
roots of invention reach deeper into our
past than we ever
imagined according to our best records
some 3.3 million years ago our ancestors
figured out how to sharpen a certain
kind of rock Rock creating a tool for
cutting much better than our teeth
boosting the chances for
survival humans dating Way Way Back In
Time have been inventing things that
help efficiency that help their survival
that help drive them forward based on
the needs of that time it's a innate
desire to make things better through
making tools
and ever since one idea has led to
another and every invention around us
today can be traced back to those first
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tools we have a cut off at tus 30
seconds since the 1950
Rockets have been our go-to Workhorse
for sending people and payloads into
orbit they are some of the most complex
machines ever built the ultimate boost
into the
sky but they aren't exactly
new even modern rockets have historic
Roots going back in time some ancient
projectiles were powered by chemical
explosives like gunpowder in 1232
Chinese soldiers repelled a Mongol Army
using flaming arrows likely propelled by
simple
Rockets today Rockets are far more
powerful able to send humans to the moon
and the International Space Station
solid rocket ignition but Rockets have
limitations putting things in orbit is
hard it takes a lot of
energy Rockets are hard
they take a lot of energy basically the
amount of fuel required for Rockets to
reach you know the outer reach of our
atmosphere is the limiting
factor something like 92 93% of the mass
of any rocket is is fuel leaving about
five or 6% for the actual structure and
only 2% for the
payload there is a high demand to put
things into space but there are limited
means of getting it
there but that may soon change if
engineers at a company called spin
launch can make the dream imagined in
this promotional video a reality spin
launch is a highly unique way to get to
space the idea itself goes back to
caveman times it's a sling a sling is an
ancient Hunter's weapon it's an
improvement on on the arm and shoulder's
ability to throw a
stone archaeologists have found ancient
evidence of slings some at least 12,000
years
old for Jonathan yany the sling is an
inspiration it rotates and at the end of
a rotational element you have really
really high speed so Jonathan embraced a
radical
idea use that speed to launch a
spacecraft into orbit a sling is
something you spin around and basically
the more you can spin it the more Force
you can basically put on the release of
whatever you're slinging out but if you
scale this up that same principle has
the ability to launch a rocket into
orbit that's
incredible that idea has been met with
skepticism so the spin launch team has
much to prove it is one of those ideas
that just sounds too crazy I think it's
good to look at things from a place of
skepticism uh at the outset but then you
have to be objective about looking at
well what are the underlying physics and
what might really be
possible the spin launch team is using
electricity to generate rotational speed
faster than the speed of sound the
proposed payload a satellite encased in
a bullet-shaped shell must withstand up
to 10,000 G's or 10,000 times the force
of Earth Earth's gravity until it is
released at just the right
moment once the aerrow shell gets around
40 Mi up the casing would separate to
allow two small rocket engines to propel
the payload the rest of the way to low
earth orbit the arm itself that's
actually spinning around needs to be
able to withstand it to a certain degree
as well so you have a need to not only
make sure that it's structurally sound
but there needs to be precision in the
timing and the programming of that
actual release point I don't have any
classical training as an
engineer I self-educate I read a lot of
books lots of books and then I read them
again because I didn't really understand
them the first time I became an engineer
along the
way the team's first goal was to build a
proof of concept Mass accelerator at 1/8
scale to validate the key Technologies
and use it as a test
to spin potential spacebound components
at many times the force of Earth's
gravity also known as as G force is and
uh G represents one unit of Earth
gravity when a pilot pulls up on the
Yoke of of their Jet and they make a
hard turn they'll feel the equivalent of
multiple times Earth gravity upwards of
H GS for example but spin launch
payloads will have to withstand Force
orders of magnitude stronger as many as
10,000 G's so the team is working on
building and testing components that can
survive such extreme acceleration you
know in some ways we humans are sort of
timid we feel most comfortable with
things that look like things we're used
to so you can't really tell at the
outset whether that thing that you're
going that's outlandish is really going
to work today the spin launch team is
asking a critical question can a payload
like a cubat survive 10,000 G's so a
cubat is this miniaturization of
satellites literally making them into
these little Cube components so this 10
cm x 10 cm x 10 cm unit is one piece
that can be added on top of each other
like Lego
blocks so we have some of the most
critical subsystems that you would see
on any satellite we have a solar cell
here it generates a current that charges
this battery up and then the battery
stores that energy right and distributes
it to all of the critical subsystems
that require electricity so the OBC or
the onboard computer is one of them this
is the the brains of the satellite the
team is confident the cube sat as a
whole Will Survive but so far they've
only tested individual components and
never the whole system you know it's a
very very common strategy in engineering
to say we're going to break this problem
into small parts we're going to solve
each of the original parts and then
we're going to put it back together
again the team aims to test some of the
components that are typically found on
cubesats starting with the
computer so this is saying effectively
its power rails are all working
correctly it looks to be talking to the
world just fine so far they know that
the battery pack is particularly
vulnerable a preest of the battery pack
system didn't make it out of the
accelerator in one
piece this gave us a great Benchmark
when it hit
7,650 GS and it was pretty darn
close and we didn't have to do all that
much to make it compatible with our
launch environment the batteries aren't
designed for 10,000 GS native the spin
launch engineering team had to figure
out how to make the batteries more
resistant to the high G forces so this
is the original we saw these batteries
laying on top of each other the concern
there is that that when you're on the
bottom of the stack you're getting three
batteries worth of mass squished on to
plus your own Mass this orientation of
the battery cells didn't work out so
well in the spinner the g-forces are
going this way and you can even see the
bolts are embedded and bent into the
base here one of the things that we did
was turn it sideways right Let each
battery support itself and itself only
so we're going to fully populate this
satellite with all of the key subsystems
that we're testing out here this is the
pre-spin test of the solar cell 1.2
volts and then after we're done with the
test we will check it out again and make
sure that it's still getting a similar
uh voltage reading this is going to be
the first time that this unit with
everything in it the battery pack the
computer is spinning up to 10,000
GS reaching the acceleration required
for launch is itself a difficult
engineering problem here we go at those
speeds friction just from the air would
be intense so the inside of the
accelerator is actually a giant vacuum
chamber if you can pull all of the air
out of it then there's no more air
resistance and consequently heat on the
rotational structure there we go now
we're going to go let the the vacuum
chamber draw down the pressure and then
we can spin
up accelerating system
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9,000
1.1 956 97 98 10,000 10,000 G's coming
down
time da
[Applause]
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go well look at that I don't hear any
rattles looks like it's
intact the pressure one feels when
you're hoping for success is mostly
about the incredible personal human
investment that's gone in and not
wanting to let down all of your
colleagues when the moment of truth
comes let's crack it
open I'm going to test voltage on the
solar cell yeah so 0.8 that's in a
reasonable range okay so now we will
take out the computer looks like it is
intact it's still responding when we
send it messages so it looks pretty good
I would say that that was a successful
test pretty cool
woo spin launch has done what Engineers
do methodically design test evaluate and
repeat as they step their way up to a
system big enough to send payloads into
low earth
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orbit we went to the desert of New
Mexico to build a flight test system you
know at a large scale that would allow
us to essentially prove that we had not
only the technology validated we could
test our own ability to construct and to
execute on a system with this magnitude
and
scale launching at 1/3 scale was a
powerful
Milestone spinning the payload to more
than 1,000
[Music]
mph it was an emotional moment from the
team you you have to have a little bit
of Faith to bring something like this to
that level and to that that scale
we've conducted 10 successful
back-to-back flight tests we haven't had
a single failure and I think that's a
testament to the practicality of the
technology this will be for the first
time since we've gone to space as a
species that will be doing it
differently it's common for engineers to
build on an old
technology transforming it with new
materials to scale their way to
Innovation it's with a spinning arm
that's throwing satellites into space
that's totally new how could that not be
exciting when you look at cutting egg
technology today you can see that it's
just being built upon the things that
we've already seen from the
past sometimes we boost technology from
the more recent
past consider something we take for
granted in everything from cell phones
to cars to video games
it's called haptics vibrations and other
physical Sensations that enable our
technology to talk back to us through
our sense of
touch at Harvard scientist and engineer
shria shason is thinking about those
physical feedback loops every time she
performs an ancient dance I've been
dancing since I was very young the ideas
around movement and sensory feedback
have been percolating in my brain for a
long
time when I dance of course I'm
intimately aware of my body and its
movements what the audience feels
however may be limited by their
conditioning or what they can perceive
visually I am a biomedical engineer by
training and at some point I I started
to wonder can we use the receptors in
our skin to communicate in the
complexity of The rhythms that are
embedded within the choreography and
would that enable the audience to
experience then the dance to a higher
Dimension shria turned her curiosity
into an engineering problem could she
share the rhythmic complexity of the
choreography as she feels it in her body
with the audience to find out she and
her dance company co-founder Joshua
George are conducting trials at
Harvard's motion capture
lab so we're going to grab this metat
tarso point the motion capture system
reads and record records the position of
the dots placed on Joshua in order to
create a digital version of his
movements and understand the biome
mechanics of the dance great but more
importantly we're interested in
capturing what's not readily visible to
the eye so muscle activation for example
or forces um to the ground now can you
flex your biceps audience members can
see the movements but they can't feel
the force of a step or a jump if you
think about how humans interact we like
shaking hands we like hugging so being
able to tap into that sense of touch or
as it sometimes called embodiment is a
gateway into allowing you to
be and experience something that you're
not immediately doing for example it'd
be great to feel how a dancer
moves so as you Flex the bicep you can
see in yellow the activation of that
muscle goad we have these reflective
markers that we put on someone we have
them do a certain Movement we take that
information and kind of convert that
into body movement um quantitative
data what we think of as haptics
embedded in
technology has roots in aviation as
planes Advanced Pilots no longer felt
mechanical vibrations in the controls
when the plane was about to stall so
haptics were used to replace these
vibrations artificially preserving the
warning haptics is super critical very
Innovative in the design process because
it has the ability to really blend the
physical world with the digital world in
our analog world haptics were everywhere
things felt you pushed a button on your
radio and the button went to clink and
you could feel it my brain is evolved to
sense whether that action that I've
taken with my finger has resulted in in
a um an actual an
effect shri's team is applying this
concept to
dance take a feel and see what you
think and the team is using modern
technology to develop it at the moment
we're using two different types of
haptics on the
phone so we can set them at different
intensities different sharpness we can
also vary how long they are we're able
to then assign a haptic pattern or a
vibration pattern to that move and have
it happen at that time during the song
or during the performance they're under
pressure to work out the Kinks they're
giving a performance the next day and
they hope to work with the audience to
test the system he yeah I think we're
set for
Friday besides enhanced dance
performances Sha's lab is also using
haptics to do research to help medical
patients with muscle spasticity move
more more smoothly they're asking if
vibration feedback can reduce the
symptoms of
spasticity a condition that causes
muscles to stiffen making them difficult
to move often as a result of spinal cord
injury or traumatic brain injury ALS
multiple sclerosis or cerebral
Psy Patrick paraso a PhD candidate is
one of Sha's students with spasticity it
feels like someone is holding your limb
in place anytime you want to move you
have to struggle against
yourself in the motion capture lab shria
is working on a potential solution the
nervous system is kind of like an
orchestra and conducting it is the brain
sending signals but also receiving
feedback about which parts are playing
what and having them work together is
the key to executing movement and moving
seamlessly in the
world in typical arm motion the bicep
contracts to bend the arm at the elbow
while the tricep relaxes and the tricep
contracts to straighten the arm while
the bicep
relaxes the device that they're building
is designed to pick up activation of one
muscle and then mechanically tell the
opposite muscle to
relax in a patient with spasticity for
example there's co-contraction so as
your bicep contracts your tricep is also
Contracting and that causes that
movement to be rigid
so we're targeting the biceps and
triceps let me know if it's two
biomedical engineering requires a
foundamental understanding not only of
the basic engineering principles like
mechanics electronics and uh computer
science but also of the foundamental
properties of the biology of the human
body step one put the Prototype system
on student volunteer Annie and use it to
collect data with a simple reflex test
we've attached EMG sensors so EMG is
electromyography we're going to record
the activation of her muscles and then
display it on this
laptop yeah I think it would that was oh
yeah that was a stronger step two
measure the amount of muscle activation
when the device vibrates to see if the
activation goes down so now we're going
to turn on the vibration here what we're
looking at is is can we apply vibratory
stimuli at just the right time at the at
the right amount and the right
parameters to relax the relevant muscles
to allow for more free
movement y all right so now it should be
stimulating on the bicep Can you feel it
on your bicep
yes yep right there all right great The
Next Step preliminary analysis of the
Motions the hope is that vibration
reduces unwanted muscle Activation so
they can use vibrations in their device
to relax the targeted muscles if they
can demonstrate that then eventually
they plan to build a device that will
detect activation in one muscle and
determine which other muscle to
deactivate begin boosting flexibility
two and restoring Motion in today's test
relx the device is giving them
encouraging data confirming vibration as
an effective strategy for relaxing
specific muscles brings them one step
closer to developing a therapeutic
device for spasticity the feeling that
we were able to what appears to be
successfully relax those muscles with
vibration was a very good feeling
because it means that we're one step
closer to help people with spasticity
move more
easily from one test to another good
evening everybody Welcome to decoded
rhythms the human nervous system pres
the first opportunity for Tria and her
dance company to add a layer to the
performance through haptic feedback
sensation is the gateway to The Human
Experience audience members download an
app and as they watch and listen they'll
feel synchronized
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vibrations we're hoping that the
audience can be more in tune with the
performance by giving them the sort of
understanding haptically what the
dancers are
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doing I thought it was a good work in
progress demo most of the technology
aspects worked well everything Syed and
it was exciting to just see inti
people's initial reactions to it I love
this um I'm an exb answer there's
something about having this motion and
movement in my hand but I felt I was
moving along with you and that was
really
cool combining two worlds each adding a
bit to the other I would say that the
data that we're Gathering From the dance
work the biomechanics the ability to
classify movements to interpret intent
all of those higher level insights uh
will guide us in the development of
patterns for um patients with spasticity
3 four 5 relax we all have physical
limits but tools of all kinds help us go
beyond what our bodies can do on their
own simple machines like levers and
pulleys and screws boost our strength
but we also make tools just for
[Music]
fun every invention starts with an idea
we're trying to see how much much play
there is for Tahira Reed Smith her idea
comes from a childhood
passion Double
Dutch growing up in Bronx New York in
the 1980s Double Dutch was just what you
did as a little girl this double rope
version of jump rope was brought to New
York by Dutch settlers in the 17th
century
[Music]
and more recently it became popular
particularly among black girls in cities
across the
us there are even fiercely competitive
National competitions and in some high
schools it's recognized as a Varsity
Sport to play double dutch requires two
people spinning ropes in opposite
directions and at least one person to
jump to Hera dreamed of a machine that
would allow her an only child at the
time to play double dutch whenever she
wanted in third grade she won a contest
for that concept and in the years that
followed she never gave up on that dream
major passion
project talking about an idea that I've
had for decades today she's a mechanical
engineer and Professor working in human
machine systems and she's building to
her Ultimate Dream to create an
affordable version of her invention that
people everywhere could
enjoy meanwhile another engineer sky
leani is working on her own Double Dutch
prototype Sky works at a robotic
software
company when I was in college I found Dr
Reed's Double Dutch machine at a point
where I was feeling like I couldn't get
where I wanted to go I was just
surrounded by a lot of people who didn't
look like me I saw she was from the
Bronx which is kind of similar to where
I'm from and that really inspired me
problems that matter that are informed
by culture that are informed by
background can stimulate the desire to
get into engineering the desire to go
about this process of creating something
that didn't previously exist the
problems which we decide are important
enough to solve are influenced by
someone background in someone's culture
Tahira has come to viome robotics in New
York City to collaborate with Sky oh my
go Bringing along her goddaughter saai
part of the latest generation interested
in engineering Double Dutch when I first
learned about Sky it really touched me
deeply because I didn't know that people
were watching me from afar when I was
looking at your designs I was just like
wow really I was just very encouraged by
it and I was also impressed by her
passion and her excitement
sky isn't a mechanical engineer like
Tahira is she's iterated on tahira's
design adding computer controlled Motors
and a software interface to control the
two ropes what are the traits of an
engineer I think it's hard to generalize
I feel like there's there's many
different kinds of engineering there's
many different kinds of skills required
in the different types of
engineering she's modernized it writing
code to control it there's vision for
even an app and doing everything largely
through computer software and
electronics very little mechanical
engineering as Sky describes her
approach Tahira sees that sky is running
into a familiar
problem synchronizing the
ropes the ropes need to extend in a high
arc turning in opposite directions and
staying 180° out of f stay with each
other in other words when one rope is on
the ground the other should be directly
overhead as they rotate they need to
maintain a regular rhythm to truly
create double
dutch it looks easy when a person does
it but as Tahira and Sky know firsthand
it's anything but simple to engineer
that was
wrong the motor is always the most
challenging aspect and that is how it
was with us with double dutch the
biomechanics that people use to get it
to it looks so seamless but trying to
recreate that in a robot yes you realize
we have to ask ourselves how does the
biology do it with materials and
information processing units that no
engineer would dream of using how is it
that we can move both ropes so well at
the same time but a robot can't so then
the question is what do we need to do to
replicate that
let sky has chosen Motors that are
powerful enough to swing the ropes with
an added feature the motor for the
double dutch machine is from a
hoverboard they're DC motors with
encoders in them so they can track the
position the encoder setup uses magnetic
poles mounted on the motor's sh
a nearby sensor detects the changes in
magnetic field as the motor spins
tracking the motor's rotational position
and speed with
Precision that information can then be
sent to a computer to adjust the spin in
real
time at least in theory A B A and C
running right now not B he isn't running
see for now only three of Sky's four
Motors are spinning if these are two
people's arms it's just that it's like
you step to the right okay they decide
to align two working Motors so they can
work with one spinning rope for now
let's just turn it around let's just
[Music]
see yeah this is slow enough where I
could actually just walk into
[Music]
it it's an impressive Milestone the two
arms turning the Rope are perfectly in
sync stop
it
okay oh my gosh so good I haven't seen
anybody use it or anything this let's
see it's really important especially in
sort of engineering projects where
there's a consumer to sort of take
prototypes and actually test them with
your end users to see what their
feedback is that's what I love so much
about this project is Double Dutch is
collaborative and then robotics as an
entire field it combines three types of
engineering mechanical electrical and
software
engineering after making some tweaks to
the code they decide to try a true
Double Dutch jump you want to hear a Pat
Pat Pat Pat Pat Pat okay can you take it
over for me with two of the working
Motors to hear a guide Sky to be a stand
in turn just snatch it from me right all
right there you go try with the little
bit of
hand with Sky assistance the motors are
leading the
way and they're working like a charm oh
that's so satisfying oh my
gosh thank you so much Dr re this is so
welcome amazing this is fun working with
Dr re today was incredible it was
actually a dream for me I felt like if I
continue with this project I'm going to
get there and then I'm going to see
myself as a different person who's
capable of more than I used to think I
was meanwhile after decades Tahira is
finally taking her own Double Dutch
design to the next
level and when we've done small tests
she's partnering with a product design
company to turn her prototype into an
affordable consumer ready
version historically what has been
difficult has been how to design this
system in such a way that it's fully
functional and also coste effective
which is why she still thinks that the
most practical approach is to use only
mechanical means to synchronize the
motors Tahira and director of industrial
design Steve Escobar are deep in the
proof of concept
stage for now they're working with a
rudimentary plywood model to answer a
few basic design questions
once you have an idea how are you going
to actually execute the idea how are you
going to design the idea so that people
will actually want to use it how are you
going to make it accessible um both from
a cost perspective but also uh from a a
user interface perspective this first
iteration of the design uses just one
motor on each side plus some good
oldfashioned mechanical Hardware like
gears rockets and
chains already they're facing a few
familiar challenges looks like it's in
syn actually including getting the ropes
in sink it's starting to go out of sink
okay with years of Double Dutch
experience toira knows exactly what the
ropes should sound like we need to be
able to hear a consistent pat p Pat Pat
but we're
hearing it's very rhythmic that's why
when stuff's out of beat it's like it's
like the whole it's this is just wrong
if anything slips it would be a tooth
using gears is a common sense way to
keep the rotation of the ropes in sync
but something is wrong we think the
weight of the Rope is throwing this
off when it's in motion it's actually
creating too much force for these arms
let's take some of these off and let's
see what
happens let's see let me just listen for
it so how's it going yes it's coming
along Michael spro president of spec
design stops in to see how things are
progressing where are we at guys how do
we as a team they talk about the day's
testing and how to improve the design
there's a lot to think about with some
of the play that's still in the arms
your visit with Sky was very
inspirational to us and that was
switching from a single motor with gears
to two Motors at each end when you
shared that with us it really kind of
turned a light bulb on it's extremely
important to have different people who
can see things from a different angle uh
because each one of us have our own
blind spots tahira's initial designs
were rooted in her experience with
mechanisms but collaborating with sky
has expanded the possibilities for
realizing the machine the best moments
of ideation are in my experience
collaborative and they involve ideas
bouncing off one another being folded
over the negative of that idea being
turned in into the positive of this
other idea working together across
different fields what Engineers call
interdisciplinary collaboration can be a
powerful
multiplier though a lot more
troubleshooting remains to he's project
is finally coming to life after Decades
of work semi surreal exciting it's a lot
it's heartwarming
it's just
glad there's a message behind this
product when it gets on the market
there's a story to inspire young girls
young inventors young minds dreamers to
hear a dreamt of a machine that could
recreate the Motions of another person's
arms
but what happens when Engineers take aim
at a biological system that is far more
complex like Vision restoring the
ability to see with an idea that once
seemed like science
fiction separ the $6 million man I have
to say if there was any inspiration that
that show was can't hold it she's
breaking up she's break
we can rebuild him we have the
technology When I Was An undergraduate I
became interested in how Electronics
could be mated with the human
body for more than 20 years Phil tro and
his interdisciplinary research group
have been pioneering a technology
designed to restore some Vision to those
who have lost the ability to
see we've been using Prosthetics to
restore our body's abilities for
thousands of
years one of the most useful Prosthetics
has been the very humble glasses right
so you have a sense you have a sense of
sight but then there's a distortion in
the curvature of your eye so then you
use a lens to compensate for that but
this new device takes visual Prosthetics
to the next level the idea is to take
the information you capture from a
camera and bypass the eyes and optic
nerve and go directly to the brain the
state of
neuroengineering is at its infancy with
very very promising avenues for growth
one that has been for a very long time a
dream of Engineers is to be able to
interface with the nervous
system Phil's group is the first to
receive FDA permission to implant into
the brain of a blind person a network of
Wireless
stimulators each just five millim
across you see the electrodes sticking
out there even if they meet the criteria
the visual the medical criteria they
have to be willing to embark on brain
surgery it's hard to find someone that
fits into all of that
criteria the team has qualified their
first participant Brian busard who lost
his vision completely several years
years ago does the headband match my
shoes it does actually was perfect I was
kidding Brian agreed to have a group of
these stimulators surgically implanted
in his visual cortex when you're
considering designing something that
will be implanted in a person one of the
safety checks is making sure that
whatever that thing is it doesn't
actually harm a per and how did you
sleep last night on a scale of 1 to 10
for the trial he is referred to as the
participant not the patient as his
collaboration with the entire team is
essential I was going to be the first
one in my lifetime I get to be the first
of something that could change people's
lives later on you know like who was the
first person to walk on the
moon that's one small step for man one
Le for man artificial Vision has really
been enabled by advances in imaging
technology the the development of
incredibly tiny detectors and Incredibly
tiny communication signaling
transmitters have enabled these
implantable
devices the implants in Brian's brain
are receivers for signals that in turn
stimulate the brain the coil transmits
signals that they hope the brain will
interpret as visual
information each of those 25 arrays has
has 16 electrodes that we can stimulate
on command and the goal is to use those
electrodes to activate the healthy
neurons that are still there and just
haven't been receiving normal visual
input for a
while what do I see probably the closest
thing I would say is if you had blips on
a radar screen the process requires
creating a new kind of visual language
imagine getting these funny flashing
lights from either a retinal or a
cortical prosthesis that don't look
anything like what Vision used to be and
then your brain is beginning to discover
there's a message to the madness there
is some pattern in here and if I can try
to find out how things hang together
then then I can learn to understand
what's around me people used to think
well we need to recreate the signals
from the eyes into that same neural code
but we've seen examples where if you
establish a an interface with those are
and you give them a consistent input the
brain will adapt and interpret those as
best as it can as Brian continues to
adapt the work has progressed from the
chair to a smaller carts sized version
of the
system connected by aord with researcher
Michael Barry pushing the cart and
following behind so we're putting on the
visible light glass yeah the basic idea
is to capture images with a camera
technologically somehow convert those
images to the commands that go to each
of these little
modules stand up slowly but to your
left the first real exciting thing for
me was when we added a camera to it and
it went like this with my hand and then
I went like oh there's my thumb so that
was the first time in probably
6 years that I had a sensation a
vision that was exciting it gave me a
system so what we're going to work on
today is a task of finding an open
chair can you identify which chair is
open right there great job yeah good job
what we're providing is really a
targeting system it says for whatever
the camera is detecting is something
there it says where something is but you
don't know what it is let me find the
cart that way we don't pull the cords
hey so do you want to try something
infrared the team decides to expand the
testing to include a camera that can see
wavelengths of light beyond what humans
can see y so now we have the thermal
sent
answer why should you limit your
wavelength to the visible range why not
allow someone to see in the thermal
range with his limited vision infrared
allows Brian to distinguish people and
animals by their body heat for this task
you will find there's one occupied
chair oh there's Grace right there hi
Grace nice to meet
you but you still have the big donut on
the back of your head you still have
wires for the camera if you walk too
fast well we can pull the coil you lose
signal and you got to stop and reset
there are a lot of technologies that
work beautifully in the lab right where
you have a lot of space it's dedicated
and everything works well um but the
reality is people move they have their
lives they want to live the way they
want to live and be mobile nice to meet
you with the basic technology working
the team has been building a system that
condenses an entire cart of equipment
into a wearable device so Brian can go
mobile the camera records images that
are translated by a mini computer into
signals his brain can understand these
are then sent through a transmitter and
beamed into Brian's implants reaching
his visual
cortex okay so I'm going to H this on
your belt okay you should be good to go
we're good to you're freed
up Trish was right there she she moved
now she's right there I was just going
to tell you you can walk to me I was
going to say she's right there yeah I'm
right here okay so I'm guessing this is
tables over
here or somebody or
something as soon as he didn't have that
starting and stopping of trying to keep
the cart right behind him yeah he just
decided to just walk around the room and
see what all was
here becoming untethered was a big step
it gave me the flexibility to move and
and and try and figure it out quicker or
on my own okay there's something here
this another table yep so now we have
the thermal
sensor there's somebody right there you
found me hey watching Brian see his wife
without his eyes is a powerful
validation of all their hard work
the moment today when he had on the
mobile unit and he walked to his wife
and saw her I just thought that was
really a special moment she didn't make
a sound but you went to her you found
her in the room do you think oh my gosh
this man has lost his vision and now he
can see something with the help of this
engineering system strapped to him all
of these things have come together all
that iteration and testing in protocols
the door it's pretty
amazing this person is volunteering
themselves putting putting themselves at
risk they're doing so not because they
expect to get Vision back it's for
advancement of knowledge it's for what
we learn now we make possible what will
become a standard of care 100 years from
now somebody right there just from a
human standpoint I think we should be
wired that uh we want to leave the world
a better place than it was when we got
here the following day the team gathers
to review their progress with the mobile
system did it accomplish the goal of
making you feel more autonomous and
liberated well full disclosure if it
would have been nice out yesterday it
would have been oops I made a leftand
turn and go out the
door now it's okay well what do we
prioritize next probably the
next step would be as if we can
combine either the two cameras into one
or even adding the the second visual
camera so we can get depth into it from
an engineering perspective engineering
is not not just a
technology stemming from math and
science and the question we're asking is
how can an artificial interface like
this be used to provide useful sensory
information for someone who has
blindness we do have now the interface
albeit in somewhat simpler form than
some would like but we do have the
interface and we are now answering the
questions
is it such a a high-risk High payoff
engineering challenge giving Vision to
someone who's vision impaired is just
such a Holy Grail um engineering
strategy and they've done it our
aspirations are high and we only get
there by making stepbystep incremental
progress hi there he is hey buddy I
think we're proud of the fact that maybe
we got there first good boy I think
we're done
we're here today with the world around
us as it is because we are hardwired to
invent
design and build
tools as we continue to boost our
abilities with technology it's anyone's
guess what we'll create in the
future when we go to create something
new we're stepping into to the unknown
with creativity and collaboration we can
solve even the most difficult problems
science fiction has always inspired the
world and it is the job of Engineers to
convert that inspiration into Innovation
and invent the
solutions building stuff to benefit
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