| Dario trying out his backhoe hand. Carlos Arturo Torres |
Prosthetic
limbs are made more or less in the image of the limb they are
replacing. But, as some people have discovered, they don't have to be.
And
as Carlos Arturo Torres, formerly of the Umeå Institute of Design in
Sweden and now living in Chicago, wants the world to know, they can do a
lot more than just look nifty and flash LEDs. For his final project
university in 2014, Torres designed Iko, a prosthetic arm for children
that also acts as a platform for creative Le
The project was awarded the prize for Open Design Student in the 2015 Core77 Design Awards earlier this month.
"The
needs of a kid in disability are not always related to physical
activity but often alternatively the social and psychological aspect;
sometimes a functional element is everything they need, but some other
times it might be a spaceship, or a doll house, or a telescope, or a
video game controller, or a swim fin," Torres explained on the project page on Core77.
"What if kids could use their imagination to create their own
prosthetics, their own tools according to their own needs? Learning.
Creating. Being kids."
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