Nairobi – A pair of self-taught Kenyan innovators have built a bio-robotic prosthetic arm out of e-waste
Cousins Moses Kiuna, 29, and David Gathu, 30, created their first prosthetic arm way back in 2012, after their neighbour lost a limb in an industrial accident.
But their latest invention is a little more complex. It uses a headset receiver to pick up brain signals and convert them to an electric current, which is then sent to a transmitter that wirelessly relays commands to the arm, prompting it into action. It all happens in under two seconds.
“We noticed that Kenya imports prosthetics which are costly,” Kiuna said. “So we asked ourselves, ‘How can we solve our own problems?”
Since high school, the cousins have been scouring dumps around the Kenyan capital in search of discarded gadgets that they have repurposed to create more than a dozen inventions. These include an infrared device to sterilise banknotes and a green-energy generator that converts oxygen into electricity.
Gathu dropped out of school at 17 and Kiuna left college a couple of years later, but that hasn’t stopped their thirst for knowledge.
“We studied neurophysiology by reading books and sitting with doctors to explain concepts to us,” Gathu said, explaining how they came up with the prosthetic arm.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Pixabay
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