These prosthetics break the mold with third thumbs, spikes, and superhero skins

Many mornings, Dani Clode wakes up, straps a robotic thumb to 1 of her hands, and gets to work, poring done reams of neuroscience data, sketching ideas for caller prosthetic devices, and reasoning astir ways to augment the quality body. Clode works arsenic a specializer astatine the University of Cambridge’s Plasticity Lab, which studies the neuroscience of assistive devices.

But she besides creates prosthetics, ones that often autumn extracurricular the accepted bounds of functionality and aesthetics. Her designs see a wide acrylic forearm prosthetic with an interior metronome that beats successful sync with the wearer’s bosom and an limb made with rearrangeable sections of resin, polished wood, moss, bronze, gold, rhodium, and cork. 

Clode’s existent project, 1 that is besides helping her get enactment done, is simply a “third thumb” that anyone tin usage to augment their grip. The flexible instrumentality is powered by motors and controlled utilizing unit sensors successful the wearer’s shoes. Volunteers person learned to usage it to unscrew a bottle, portion tea, and adjacent play guitar. She hopes that 1 time the thumb (and devices similar it) mightiness assistance everyone from mill workers to surgeons execute tasks much efficiently, with little strain connected their ain bodies.

Traditionally, prosthetics designers person looked to the quality assemblage for inspiration. Prosthetics were seen arsenic replacements for missing assemblage parts; hyperrealistic bionic legs and arms were the beatified grail. Thanks to sci-fi franchises similar Star Wars, specified devices inactive person a vise grip connected our corporate imagination. For amended oregon worse, they’ve shaped however astir radical conceive of the aboriginal of prosthetics. 

But Clode is portion of a question successful alternate prosthetics, a signifier of assistive tech that bucks normal by making nary effort to blend in. Instead of making devices that mimic the quality of a “normal” limb oregon leg, she and her chap designers are creating fantastical prosthetics that mightiness wriggle similar a tentacle, airy up, oregon adjacent sprout glitter. Other unconventional prosthetics, similar the leaf legs favored by runners, are designed for circumstantial tasks. Designers judge that these devices tin assistance prosthetics users wrest backmost power of their ain representation and consciousness much empowered, portion simultaneously breaking down immoderate of the stigma astir disablement and limb differences. 

But adjacent arsenic alternate prosthetics summation visibility, they are shadowed by an uncomfortable fact: prosthetics are inactive accessible lone to a tiny percent of those who could payment from them. In a satellite successful which galore radical who privation a prosthetic can’t spend one, advocates are searching for a mediate crushed wherever accessibility, style, and substance overlap. 

Prosthetic devices are aged and profoundly human. The earliest known artificial limbs are from past Egypt: 2 sculpted toes, 1 recovered strapped to the close ft of a mummy, which day backmost 2,500 to 3,000 years and carnivore unmistakable marks from corded sandals.

Ancient radical crafted and wore prosthetics for myriad reasons—some practical, immoderate spiritual, immoderate tinged with ableist logic. Most were designed to blend in, but immoderate intentionally stood out. When the Roman wide Marcus Sergius Silus mislaid his manus successful the Second Punic War, helium reportedly ordered up an robust replacement. At slightest 1 medieval Italian antheral appears to person replaced his manus with a knife.

Instead of making devices that mimic the quality of a “normal” limb oregon leg, Clode and her chap designers are creating fantastical prosthetics that mightiness wriggle similar a tentacle, airy up, oregon adjacent sprout glitter.

The impulse to customize one’s prosthetic makes consciousness to Victoria Pitts-Taylor, a prof of sex studies astatine Wesleyan University who has researched assemblage modification successful culture, medicine, and science. “Whatever we’re doing to our bodies, we’re not doing it to them successful a societal vacuum,” she says. Veterans whitethorn privation to explicit their individuality with a carnal tribute to their subject service, portion artists whitethorn privation to experimentation with colour and pattern.

In Pitts-Taylor’s view, everyone successful nine is expected to modify their assemblage successful immoderate way—by getting definite haircuts, for example, and wearing peculiar clothes. “When we are capable to find ways to modify our bodies that bespeak our sensibilities and our consciousness of ourselves, it feels truly good,” she says.

The apical fractional of Dani Clode’s “Materialise” limb is made of rearrangeable segments composed of unconventional materials, including resin, polished wood, moss, bronze, gold, rhodium, and cork.

COURTESY OF DANI CLODE

The disablement rights movement, which took disconnected successful the United States alongside the civilian rights and queer liberation movements of the 1960s, has been pushing for broader prosthetic acceptance for decades. Early activists took to the streets wearing minimal devices specified arsenic divided hooks (or nary devices astatine all), portion aboriginal ones glued sparkling disco-ball mirrors to their prosthetics. “The thought being: I’m not going to alteration my assemblage to suit accepted standards,” says David Serlin, a disablement and plan historiographer astatine the University of California, San Diego. 

But the modern aesculapian strategy is not acceptable up to instrumentality things similar self-expression oregon individuality into account. Today, erstwhile large medical-device companies plan assistive technology, they inactive often attack it from a “curative” perspective, an attack known arsenic biomedicalization. 

“The intent of biomedicalization is to normalize bodies,” says Pitts-Taylor. The purpose is to nutrient a assemblage arsenic adjacent to the “ideal” arsenic possible, and successful Western medicine, that perfect is often white, gendered, and able-bodied. 

These priorities person fed into a agelong bequest of ineffective oregon uncomfortable prosthetics that don’t truly conscionable individuals’ needs (let unsocial align with their consciousness of self). For example, prosthetic hands typically travel successful conscionable 3 sizes—“male,” “female,” and “child.” But a batch of radical autumn determination successful betwixt these measurement ranges oregon extracurricular them altogether. 

Such constricted prime tin make an awkward mismatch betwixt their artificial and biologic limbs. For radical of color, selecting a instrumentality tin beryllium adjacent much jarring, arsenic immoderate prosthetics manufacturers regularly administer lone a fewer skin-tone options to clinics and hospitals.

People missing an precocious limb inactive look societal unit to deterioration a high-tech, five-fingered bionic device, whether oregon not it’s a bully fit.

Prosthetics users are besides not a monolith, says Clode. Individuals person unsocial levels of interaction sensitivity, based connected things similar the attraction of nerves successful their residual limb and whether they acquisition phantom limb sensations. These factors tin greatly impact their willingness and quality to tolerate a prosthetic, which indispensable acceptable snugly implicit this delicate area. 

And a idiosyncratic calved with a limb difference, for example, tin person a vastly antithetic acquisition from an amputee. Someone who loses a limb aboriginal successful beingness whitethorn find comfortableness successful wearing an assistive device. But galore radical who are calved missing an limb are highly proficient astatine performing mundane tasks with their residual limb, to the constituent wherever clunky prosthetics conscionable get successful the way. 

Today, prosthetics users tin get fitted with acold much high-tech solutions, similar myoelectric devices—motorized limbs that person electrical signals from muscles successful a residual limb into movement. But galore radical take to forgo these analyzable robot-like limbs successful favour of much specialized devices similar Amar’s, specified arsenic diversion leaf legs oregon body-powered “activity arms” with a swappable end. “I person 1 of those, which I mostly usage for moving out,” says Britt H. Young, a tech writer and PhD campaigner astatine the University of California, Berkeley. “In galore ways, radical who usage those person greater satisfaction.”

For a agelong time, 1 presumption underlying the improvement of aesculapian devices was that a prosthetic that lines up with the brain’s expectations would beryllium inherently easier to run (or, successful probe terms, “embody”). “When we deliberation astir embodiment, we deliberation astir thing that is adjacent to our assemblage template,” says Tamar Makin, a prof of cognitive neuroscience astatine the University of Cambridge who works intimately with Clode to analyse however the encephalon adjusts to interfacing with artificial limbs. Makin’s probe confirms what prosthetics users person agelong intuited: our brains are really precise flexible successful their quality to accommodate to caller limbs. 

Prosthetics look to inhabit a abstraction betwixt “object” and “self.” In a 2020 paper published successful PLOS Biology, Makin’s laboratory scanned the brains of prosthetics users and non–prosthetics users successful an fMRI instrumentality to spot however peculiar areas successful the encephalon respond to the beingness of an artificial limb. The researchers initially expected to spot akin patterns whether radical utilized an artificial arm, a flesh-and-blood hand, oregon a instrumentality for regular tasks. But this was not the case.

“Prosthetics were not represented similar hands,” says Makin, “but they were besides not represented similar tools.” Instead, they seemed to trigger a unsocial neural signature—neither manus nor instrumentality but a antecedently chartless thing. These patterns were accordant crossed antithetic users, suggesting that astir radical tin readily accommodate to a wide assortment of artificial-limb configurations, provided the instrumentality remains utile successful their regular lives. 

Lower-body prosthetics that don’t look similar accepted limbs are dilatory gaining broader taste acceptance, particularly successful the sports arena, wherever high-profile athletes similar Aimée Mullins and Blake Leeper person helped catapult moving blades into the spotlight. But radical missing an precocious limb inactive look societal unit to deterioration a high-tech, five-fingered bionic device, whether oregon not it’s a bully fit.

Jason Barnes wanted an upper-limb prosthetic of a precise antithetic kind. Barnes, a euphony shaper and instrumentalist successful Atlanta, grew up with a passionateness for drums. But successful 2012, a enactment mishap sent 22,000 volts of energy surging done his close arm, and the limb was amputated beneath the elbow.

A fewer weeks aft helium got location from the hospital, helium taped a drumstick to the extremity of his bandages and began relearning however to play. It wasn’t agelong earlier helium started gathering his ain prosthetic limb from scratch with a drumstick built in. “That was a batch of proceedings and error, due to the fact that I had nary thought what I was doing,” helium says. He yet recovered an attack that worked—a drumstick limb rigged with counterweights that helium could manipulate utilizing his enarthrosis and elbow, not dissimilar from Jules Amar’s designs. Not agelong after, helium enrolled successful the percussion programme astatine the Atlanta Institute of Music and Media.

But Barnes was inactive occasionally frustrated. In bid to play successful antithetic styles—switching, for example, betwixt analyzable jazz and plaything rhythms—he had to halt to tighten oregon loosen his prosthetic. He wanted much seamless control. 

Jason Barnes plays the keyboard portion wearing a caller myoelectric prosthetic, which helium co-designed with Gil Weinberg’s laboratory astatine Georgia Tech.

ROB FELT / COURTESY OF GIL WEINBERG

He was introduced to Gil Weinberg, a euphony exertion prof astatine Georgia Tech, whose radical collaborated with Barnes to technologist a caller myoelectric drumming limb susceptible of speechmaking his musculus movements and executing overmuch much subtle hits. 

Then they took the plan a measurement further, adding a 2nd drumstick that could usage machine-learning bundle to prime up connected the rhythms of different musicians successful the band. “The thought was that the 2nd instrumentality sometimes would play thing that’s not nether Jason’s control,” says Weinberg. That creates a “kind of strange, intimate connection” betwixt the musicians.

The caller limb turned Barnes into a drumming superhero, enabling him to propulsion beyond the limits of the quality assemblage with rhythms that nary 1 other connected the satellite could touch. He adjacent acceptable a Guinness World Record for drumming velocity successful 2019. But aft a while, helium realized that it was easier to usage a azygous stick.

“Technologically, [the two-stick arm] is simply a large idea,” Barnes says. But “looking astatine it from a drummer standpoint, it benignant of didn’t marque a full batch of sense.”

Barnes hasn’t wholly fixed up connected high-tech drumming assistance. He and Weinberg are presently designing a caller myoelectric arm, 1 that combines the subtlety of the two-stick prosthetic with the originative autonomy offered by Barnes’s body-powered arm. Which prosthetic he  uses depends connected the time and what he’s trying to play.

Not each nontraditional prosthetic is designed strictly for function; immoderate are precocious fashion. Viktoria Modesta, a Latvian-born artist, has agelong been fascinated by subject fabrication and retro-futurist aesthetics. When she began wearing a prosthetic, she decided to dispense with the accepted mold entirely. “For me, it was a benignant of taking backmost power and changing the narrative,” she says. 

Modesta’s near limb was injured astatine birth, starring to years of country and aesculapian complications. She underwent an elective amputation astatine property 20 and says the alleviation was astir instant.

Before the country adjacent took place, she started imagining her prosthetics. After the operation, she collaborated with Tom Wickerson and Sophie de Oliveira Barata of a plan inaugural called the Alternative Limb Project (of which Clode is besides a member) to marque 1 of her visions a reality: a gem-encrusted little limb inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s classical fairytale “The Snow Queen.” “My limb went from beingness condemnation to an entity of emotion and desire,” she recalls.

“You should beryllium capable to experimentation with not conscionable your wardrobe but your limbs, your power, your everything.”

Since then, Modesta, a musician, model, and self-described bionic popular artist, has helped bring scores of futuristic limbs to life. You tin spot her featured successful a promotion for Rolls-Royce with a limb that houses a Jacob’s ladder, arcs of energy zinging up her shin; walking the runway with a chrome-plated femur; floating successful microgravity with a limb similar a metallic tentacle. In her viral 2014 euphony video “Prototype,” she sports 1 of her astir iconic looks: the Spike leg, an obsidian dagger whose design, she says, came to her successful a dream. 

Controlling the look of her prosthetic has helped Modesta afloat clasp her body, a benignant of self-expression that she believes should beryllium disposable to everyone. “You should beryllium capable to experimentation with not conscionable your wardrobe but your limbs, your power, your everything,” she says. But portion accessibility is dilatory improving, she recognizes that for galore radical crossed the globe, customized prosthetics simply aren’t an enactment yet. 

Viktoria Modesta models the Spike leg, whose plan came to her successful a dream.

COURTESY OF VIKTORIA MODESTA

Artificial limbs are pricey. Even with large insurance, a prosthetic limb tin outgo anyplace from $5,000 to upwards of $80,000, depending connected its complexity. What’s more, the limb’s parts person to beryllium replaced arsenic they deterioration out, which costs thousands of further dollars—some genu joints unsocial tin tally $30,000. “Some security volition screen portion of it,” says Young. But astir providers “will not screen a important part.” 

And that’s without immoderate benignant of aesthetic customization. Prosthetics shaper Ottobock’s online store, for example, offers a importantly wider scope of tegument tones than it provides to clinics. The options are appealingly presented to the idiosyncratic similar decorator overgarment swatches—but the online-only shades person to beryllium customized ordered and typically aren’t covered by insurance, says Nicholas Harrier, a certified prosthetic technician based successful Michigan. 

Harrier, who mislaid a limb successful his mid-20s from an corruption pursuing puerility cancer, aims to ace unfastened the doors and marque aesthetically customized devices conscionable a small much accessible. He started flexing his originative muscles astir a decennary ago, erstwhile helium came crossed immoderate of the designs that the Alternative Limb Project helped make for Viktoria Modesta. Intrigued, Harrier reached retired to the task but ne'er heard back. So helium decided to effort making customized covers himself, opening with 1 for his ain prosthetic leg.

He created 1 that was similar thing retired of a William Gibson novel, implicit with futuristic wiring and a multihued ellipse of LEDs glowing successful its center. Almost arsenic soon arsenic Harrier enactment the finishing touches connected it, helium started gathering customized covers for others. He has since crafted dozens of them, utilizing acrylic and silicone, metallic and resin, overgarment and light.

Each portion is wholly unsocial and tailored to the individual. One is studded with steampunk clockwork; different replicates the look of Cyborg from DC Comics. Harrier’s enactment does not alteration however a prosthetic functions, conscionable however it looks. He has 1 rule: each of his covers are 100% free, built from materials helium buys and enabled by the flexible docket that his brag grants him. “I volition not complaint a idiosyncratic for this,” Harrier says. In the future, helium hopes, services similar his volition beryllium modular signifier for immoderate prosthetics clinic: “It needs to go normal. So giving them distant is crucial.”

A fewer larger businesses are moving to marque cosmetic prosthetic covers much accessible arsenic well. Companies similar the UK’s Open Bionics are creating affordable 3D-printed options, specified arsenic the “hero arm,” whose patterns are pulled consecutive from Marvel movies. Many are marketed toward kids arsenic a mode to physique self-esteem. 

Only astir 10% of folks surviving with limb nonaccomplishment worldwide person entree to a prosthetic device, according to the World Health Organization. And request isn’t the aforesaid for each demographic. In the United States, for example, Black radical are astir four times much likely to acquisition amputation. 

Young believes that radical who privation a prosthetic instrumentality of immoderate benignant should beryllium capable to bargain and support 1 without breaking the bank. “The biggest interaction we tin person connected prosthetics is not a caller attack to design, but medical-device reform,” she says. At the aforesaid time, she adds, we shouldn’t shy distant from trying to amended the plan possibilities of prosthetics. “People request to consciousness comfy successful their ain bodies arsenic a quality right,” she says. 

Reforming the prosthetics manufacture is simply a multifaceted undertaking that involves improving access, processing devices that enactment good for whoever wants them, and affirming basal dignity. “It’s not lone relation oregon lone aesthetics,” says Serlin. “It tin be, ideally, both.”

Joanna Thompson is simply a freelance subject writer based successful New York.