[HN Gopher] Inventor builds Lego arm for eight-year-old
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Inventor builds Lego arm for eight-year-old
Author : rchaudhary
Score : 174 points
Date : 2021-10-12 22:26 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.guinnessworldrecords.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.guinnessworldrecords.com)
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I love Legos (ok, _LEGO_ , whatever), but this seems like it
| deserves 3d printing. It's an ideal application of 3d printing,
| since many parts need to adapt sizewise, so injection molding
| doesn't make sense. Modularity is neat, but doesn't lend itself
| to practical designs that are strong and space efficient.
|
| My hope is that prosthesis tech and robot tech converge. If we
| can make really good artificial limbs, cheaply, we can not only
| help people who are missing natural limbs, but we can, ya know,
| train them to fold laundry or assemble iPhones.
|
| The field will take off in a big way when someone designs an arm
| that can play a large role in fabricating and assembling an arm
| like it.
| Errancer wrote:
| Related - https://www.inputmag.com/culture/cyborg-chic-bionic-
| prosthet...
| sriram_sun wrote:
| From the article: "David provides free instructions on how to
| build the MK-V LEGO(r) prosthetic arm on his YouTube channel Hand
| Solo." Made my day!
| ralgozino wrote:
| There's an Argentinian Startup (Atomic Lab[0]), founded by Gino
| Tubaro[1], that has been giving away fully 3D printed prothesis
| to childrens for several years now. It's a very cool project!
| sadly I can't find much information in English and their site is
| very minimal, but beleive what they do is awesome.
|
| Here are some articles I found on them:
|
| https://apnews.com/article/health-science-ap-top-news-latin-...
|
| https://www.fordfund.org/shaping-new-dreams
|
| Limbs project FAQ:
| https://www.facebook.com/notes/1035463880210146/
|
| [0] https://www.atomiclab.org/ [1] http://www.ginotubaro.com/ (In
| Spanish - no HTTPS) |
| https://emergeamericas.com/agenda/speakers/gino-tubaro (no
| official but in English)
| ravenstine wrote:
| Legos are just freaking neat. I don't know how else to put it.
| amelius wrote:
| Also freaking expensive.
|
| I hope LEGO subsidizes this guy's endeavor.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The patent on lego expired some years ago, in theory there's
| plenty of cheaper alternatives out there.
|
| But if you've ever handled those, you know why lego is still
| the brand to go for. Their quality and precision is still
| unparalleled. And given they're established, have a lot of
| their own IPs and licenses for big hollywood productions, and
| have their production lines set up and tweaked over a seventy
| year period, it's unlikely that there will be a serious
| competitor anytime soon.
| cardanome wrote:
| The quality part is not really true anymore. Sure, Lego is
| still the gold standard but the competition is catching up
| fast.
|
| Arguable the Polish company COBI offers higher quality than
| Lego. The pieces stick together much stronger and they are
| known for using prints instead of stickers for details on
| the models.
|
| The Chinese competition is getting quite close as well and
| newer models might have closed the gap already.
|
| Of course what is keeping Lego alive is licenses. If you
| what to own a officially licensed Start Wars set, you have
| to buy Lego. Though the prices are getting ridiculous.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Lego is just freaking neat. It is singular.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I don't agree. Other things from the Lego company like
| Legoland and the Lego Movie are just okay and not my thing.
| But Legos, as many in America refer to Lego _pieces_ , are
| neat.
|
| Then again, I'm the type who doesn't refer to Linux distros
| as "GNU/Linux". ;)
| cardanome wrote:
| What is the mental hurdle for referring towards multiple
| Lego pieces as Lego?
|
| Legos sounds like the parent that says his child is playing
| on the Nintendos.
|
| It is like saying you watch animes instead of anime. Plural
| is still anime.
|
| When in doubt, just follow the source language for
| pluralization.
| pjerem wrote:
| None of your examples sounded wrong to me so... I guess I
| have a mental hurdle :)
| shiomiru wrote:
| > Legos sounds like the parent that says his child is
| playing on the Nintendos.
|
| "Nintendos" sounds weird to me because for me a
| "Nintendo" is a console, and I rarely use more than one
| of those at the same time.
|
| When you say "Legos" on the other hand I interpret it as
| an abbreviation of something like Lego bricks.
|
| > It is like saying you watch animes instead of anime.
| Plural is still anime.
|
| "Animes" on the other hand sounds perfectly fine. We
| don't conjugate borrowed verbs in a different way either
| just because the source language has different rules for
| conjugation; the English borrowing of irregular plural
| forms is a special case which doesn't work with anime too
| well since an irregular plural form does not actually
| exist (as with most Japanese nouns). Not to mention the
| word is an abbreviation of "animation", another English
| word with a perfectly normal plural form.
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Lego#English
| speedybird wrote:
| Mental hurdle? There is no mental hurdle, I understand
| the wishes of the Lego corporation just fine. I say
| "legos" because that's what I've always said, it rolls
| off my tongue and feels comfortable to me, and I see no
| reason to change. Why should I defer to the wishes of the
| Lego corporation and let them dictate how I use language?
| Incidentally, I also call megabloks "legos" too.
|
| (I also say "animes" and "pokemons", but if I'm being
| honest those two are mostly just to get a rise out of the
| sort of people who would complain about that. I suspect
| most parents who say "nintendos" are similarly smirking
| when they say it, since the _" NoooOOooo Dad that's not
| right!"_ responses are just too amusing.)
| JonathonW wrote:
| If you want to get pedantic about it, "Lego" is a brand,
| used as an adjective; the toys made under that name are
| Lego bricks (stylized by Lego Group in official material
| as "LEGO bricks").
| ravenstine wrote:
| Sorry, but where I live everyone my entire life has
| referred to the Lego bricks as "Legos". Now let me ask
| you, why do you care?
| rogual wrote:
| It's a mass noun in some dialects and a count noun in others.
| MayeulC wrote:
| It's a reminder of how liberating it can be to have modular
| tools.
|
| Prosthetics are a bad fit for our current industry as they need
| to be customized for each wearer.
|
| Lego is quite intuitive to understand, most wearer could adjust
| their prosthetics themselves, or make extensions.
|
| I wish we had more "legos but for real projects". Is it LEGO
| technic? Aluminium profiles come close, but the ecosystem is jus
| way smaller, and not really compatible between brands.
| OpensourceEcology (https://www.opensourceecology.org/) has been
| making interesting progress in that direction, but I don't know
| what scale they embrace modularity at.
| amenghra wrote:
| Meccano might work too? Not much cheaper than Lego but they
| have their pros and cons. The pieces are flexible for one.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'd argue that's 3d printing's niche.
|
| Bricks are either expensive or require very long wait cycles to
| get the right parts from remote vendors (mostly China). They
| are also relatively big, which makes tight builds difficult,
| and they require a decent amount of expertise and building
| technique to make anything non trivial (that's putting aside
| the mechanical knowledge that would be need whatever the
| material used).
|
| For purely mechanical prosthetics it's less of an issue, but
| adding electronics is also a PITA if size/weight matters in any
| way.
|
| As an example, this youtube channel
| (https://youtube.com/c/BrickExperimentChannel) has some pretty
| advanced builds, and it often comes down to bricks as a
| frame/skeleton, and custom parts for the critical core.
|
| In comparison 3d printing has a way higher upfront learning
| curve, but the people trying to build these contraption aren't
| doing it for fun and would arguably be motivated to invest time
| and effort to make things better in the long run (they'd have
| to do it anyway even with bricks).
| ErrantX wrote:
| Cool project. When he talks about exploring 3D printing, I think
| there is someone ahead of him.
|
| A couple of weeks ago I listened to a talk by Clifford Agius
| (https://twitter.com/CliffordAgius) who is 3d printing App-
| enabled bionic arms. Pretty incredible stuff - I think he'd got
| startup costs <PS1000 and per-arm costs around PS5-600. ALl using
| open hardware/software.
|
| Sadly there is literally nothing online I can find about it other
| than this post:
| https://www.cliffordagius.co.uk/post/findingand3dprintingaha...
|
| (He's also a commercial pilot, as you do)
| yardie wrote:
| I've been following him on twitter and I honestly don't where
| he gets the time to fly, develop, conferences speaking, and
| family. I do a few international trips and my clock is out of
| service for a few days. I guess flight crew are wires
| different.
| breckenedge wrote:
| A lot of pilots I know are freelance programmers on the side.
| You're often waylaid far from home with nothing to do. The
| work comes in spurts. There are regulatory limits to how much
| you can fly. There were a lot of furloughs last year and
| international travel is still depressed.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Do you spend a lot of time in Breck? I bet that really
| self-selects for pilot-programmers. Not dismissing your
| point, I think it's cool that you know "a lot of pilots".
| breckenedge wrote:
| Nope I'm in Dallas. I did try remote work in Breckenridge
| (CO) a few months ago for the first time, but it was
| kinda depressing seeing the beautiful scenery but being
| trapped to the desk. The summer resort stuff all shuts
| down at 4pm too :-/
| dusted wrote:
| It's really awesome that we are at a technological place in time
| where "pretty much anyone" can build prosthetic limbs out of
| commonplace items such as Lego.
|
| But that it's actually done and used tells a lot (of negatives)
| about healthcare tech.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree; it seems like there are a LOT of people
| who make bionic limbs as 'side projects', but it seems they're
| not commercially available? You'd think someone would be mass
| producing them by now.
|
| Of course, a lot of articles like these are by US people, where
| finding the money for a commercial prosthetic is much more
| difficult. Can you get anything from health insurance if you
| don't have a job (because you're missing a limb)?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| If you don't have a job then you'd be covered by Medicaid,
| and Medicaid appears to provide coverage for prosthetics in
| most cases: https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-
| indicator/prosthetic-and-...
| ravenstine wrote:
| > But that it's actually done and used tells a lot (of
| negatives) about healthcare tech.
|
| Do you mean that in the sense that healthcare tech has been
| slow to move in terms of making advanced bionics available to
| the public that needs them? My general impression would make me
| agree, although bionic prosthetics have gotten way better in
| recent years. Simultaneously, it all seems like tech that could
| have been available decades prior.
| lostapathy wrote:
| It seems incredibly wrong that access to prosthetics is
| bifurcated into 2 tiers:
|
| 1) Incredibly expensive, but if you have insurance that pays
| for it, amazing. 2) DIY hobby projects that are "good enough"
| to still have incredibly profound impacts on peoples' lives.
| They aren't particularly costly, but only available if you're
| lucky enough to know someone with those skills.
|
| I know it's not a trivial problem, but it seems like we
| should be able to mass-produce the "good enough" version and
| make them widely available at an accessible cost.
| VRay wrote:
| If I'm in the same house or at least the same city, I can
| keep some pretty impressive tech working
|
| Having a working prototype with a technician on hand means
| you're only about 10% of the way to having a mass-
| producible product though
| vkou wrote:
| No, we are in a place where pretty much anyone can earn
| Internet Points by posting about this sort of stuff on
| Instagram, or wherever.
|
| The reality is that lots of people find prosthetics, both
| commercial, and DIY... deeply unsatisfying [1]. But people who
| don't use them think some of them look cool, so at least that's
| something.
|
| [1] https://www.inputmag.com/culture/cyborg-chic-bionic-
| prosthet...
| euske wrote:
| Saw this guy at this YouTube video. It's a wholesome story.
|
| "Building a Prosthetic Arm With Lego" -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFymKqUwodY
| tmaly wrote:
| That is the coolest invention I have seen all year. Bravo!
| jacquesm wrote:
| How can we get this guy some major funding to develop his ideas?
| kuu wrote:
| He has a shop: http://handsolo.com/
|
| Maybe that can help him :)
|
| He's also on Twitter: https://twitter.com/handsolooficial
| junon wrote:
| "Hand Solo" has to be the cleverest name I've seen in a very,
| very long time.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 3 levels of puns in there (that I can discover), indeed,
| very clever.
| rob74 wrote:
| Ok, the guy with the prosthetic arm wasn't Han Solo, it
| was his pal Luke, but yeah, still, nice pun!
| jacquesm wrote:
| Thank you.
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