At MIT, Hugh Herr builds prosthetic knees, legs and ankles that fuse biomechanics with microprocessors to restore (and perhaps enhance) normal gait, balance and speed.

Why you should listen

Hugh Herr co-directs the Center for Extreme Bionics at the MIT Media Lab, where he is pioneering a new class of biohybrid smart prostheses and orthoses to improve the quality of life for thousands of people with physical challenges. A powered ankle-foot prosthesis called the Empower by Ottobock, for instance, emulates the action of a biological leg to create a natural gait, allowing persons with amputation to walk with normal levels of speed and metabolism as if their legs were biological.  

Herr also advances powerful body exoskeletons that augment human physicality beyond innate physiological levels, enabling humans to walk and run faster with less metabolic energy. He is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Dephy Inc., which creates products that augment physiological function through electromechanical enhancement.

 

More news and ideas from Hugh Herr

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During the week of TED, it’s tempting to feel like a brain in a jar — to think on a highly abstracted, intellectual, hypertechnical level about every single human issue. But the speakers in this session remind us that we’re still just made of meat. And that our carbon-based life forms aren’t problems to be […]

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