WASHINGTON, October 1 ( RIA Novosti) – An American man has become the first person to walk using a bionic leg controlled by his own thoughts, researchers who helped develop the ground-breaking prosthesis told RIA Novosti Tuesday.
“This new bionic leg features incredibly intelligent engineering,” said Levi Hargrove, who led the research to develop the prosthetic device at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago’s (RIC) Center for Bionic Medicine.
The prosthesis allows 32-year-old Zac Vawter, who had his right lower leg amputated after a motorcycle accident in 2009, to do things like walk up and down stairs, sit down, stand up or reposition his leg with the same ease as a non-amputee, said Annie Simon, who works with Hargrove and was the second author on a report about the bionic leg that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“For an amputee, standing up is usually a one-legged activity, going upstairs or downstairs is a one-legged activity – you’re always leading with one leg,” Simon told RIA Novosti.
“With the bionic leg, we really worked to make it seamless and intuitive, so that Zac does what he wants to do and the leg will follow,” she said.