14 DAY TRIAL // Kids with missing limbs tend to grow up with acute psychological traumas together with a serious lack of confidence. To help them surpass this issue, Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar, a researcher at Umeå University in Sweden, has designed a prosthetic arm that’s compatible with Lego so kids can replace its original grip with some of their Lego creations.
Although the design of the arm is casual as far as prosthetics go, the mechanical arm also features a twist-and-lock modular design that’s built so kids can easily assemble. Having a special motorized adapter, its standard three-finger gripper can be swapped with one made entire of Lego pieces.
This way Carlos hopes it’ll encourage kids not to treat their mechanical arm as a burden but rather as a canvas on which they can customize and turn into one of their toys. This way it will give them not only increased confidence, but it will also encourage them to expand their creativity and make them feel appreciated for their invention.
The prosthetic arm has a socket and a battery system which powers the artificial limb via a processor to do all the movement. In a way, this is a base from which kids can build everything they want. Being developed together with Lego FutureLab, all Lego pieces will be compatible with the prosthetic arm for kids to have fun.
However, this is not an advanced neural-connected prosthetic but a specialized toy for disabled kids, and although it has little practicality, as of now, except for playing with it, the arm might very well increase their confidence and just give them pure, innocent fun.
Still, we should be careful; maybe one of these kids could turn into a Dr. Octopus when they grow up!
