Monsurat
Two young Kenyan inventors are inventing bio-robotic prosthetic limbs out of recycled materials. David Gathu and his cousin Moses Kiuna are lending a helping to the community in the suburbs of Kikuyu in Kenya’s Kiambu County.
They have been doing this since they were kids, dismantling toys, radios and everything even though this landed them in trouble several times. Today, they are more advanced and more innovative in making robots that can help people with disabilities.
The robots will help people perform day-to-day tasks without assistance. The aspiration to construct assistive technology started with the need to help the community. They told AA.com that “the main reason we came up with this is to help people in our community who have lost their limbs. We don’t want these people to feel like they can’t do anything, we want them to be dependent on themselves.”
Gathu and Kiuna have studied how the brain sends signal to the nervous system in order for a motor activity to occur. Using this knowledge, they make bio-robotic prosthetic limbs that can function like a human limb to help those with disabilities.
The brain sends signal to a helmet attached to the head, which is then converted into an electric current known as NeuroNode, this will then go to the limb and tell it what to do. Asides a prosthetic arm, the cousins have also invented an artificially intelligent robot with a human interface, who receives instructions in both English and Swahili, to help people who have lost movement below the neck due to an accident or illness.
The 29-year-olds pick up junks that people throw away like plastic, LED lights, USB devices, rubber, old computer motherboards, power supply units and so on to make their robots. They work out of their grandmother’s old shed made out of worn-out rusted iron sheets near a chicken coop. However, they have organized it to look like something out of a science-fiction movie said AA.com.
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