A new prosthetic arm dubbed Iko can be endlessly customized with Lego pieces so that kids can make it whatever they want it to be.
The field of prosthetics has seen significant advances in recent years. Designers have harnessed new technologies like 3-D printing to make prosthetics more beautiful, fashionable, or waterproof. Making prosthetics more accessible and expressive empowers the people who wear them. Iko aims to help kids overcome the stigma of having a prosthetic by making it fun to wear.
Iko is the work of Carlos Arturo Torres, who built the set of white plastic parts so that a child could easily swap out a hand-like four-fingered claw for a digital spaceship. "My friends in psychology used to tell me that when a kid has a disability, he is not really aware of it until he faces society," Torres says. "That's when they have a super rough encounter." Torres's design is geared toward kids between three and 12 years old, a broad age range covering crucial self-esteem-building years.
Using tech to make amputee kids feel like they have superpowers. May we all do such good with our craft...
(Score: 1) by Snospar on Tuesday August 04 2015, @08:32AM
I think this is a fantastic project and seeing the kids in the video playing with the prosthetic and starting to build onto it is amazing. How long until all the children are envious of the amputee while they're stuck with their boring organic appendages? Maybe they can build themselves a LEGO "powerglove" to achieve equality?
My only problem with this story is the usual attempt to peg LEGO as a toy for a fixed age range - I'm well past 40 and I still love LEGO. I also have access to a lot more money than your average 3 - 12 year old (and some generous family members) that means I can get hold of some awesome LEGO Technic sets that are just way too expensive for children.
(And I'm not knocking LEGO for it's cost, you pay for an very long lasting "toy" with precision parts of an extremely high standard and in all my years I've never seen a malformed LEGO piece come out of the factory.)
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