Prosthetics

Paul Slaughter knew early on he wanted an engineering degree that would help amputees, even writing in a high school career essay about designing prosthetics to assist athletes. The mechanical engineering graduate student recently got that opportunity when he designed a prosthetic leg for Army veteran Kelly Elmlinger to compete in triathlons, including a World Triathlon Para Series event where Elmlinger used the leg to help come in first place. Read More

Andrés Martínez strode briskly on the treadmill, staring straight ahead and counting backwards by seven from 898, a trick to keep his brain from anticipating the literal stumbling block heading his way: a compact 35 pounds of steel specifically designed to make him fall. Special goggles kept him from looking down. Arrows on an eye-level... Read More

The automatic stumble response, so natural for most people, is virtually impossible for those who use prosthetic legs, simply because even state-of-the-art prosthetics cannot adapt to stumbling. Read More

Inspiration and innovation abounded as more than 70 teams of engineering seniors presented their final projects Monday. The annual Senior Design Day attracted hundreds of visitors from Vanderbilt and the Nashville community to the Student Life Center. Read More

The seven-week program can be arduous, but teams save much time later by avoiding missteps thanks to their extensive research and the mentoring they receive. Read More

The device is from the lab of Professor Michael Goldfarb, perhaps best known for working on a bionic leg with shark attack victim Craig Hutto and later developing the Indego exoskeleton. Read More

"Performance-boosting super suit" hidden under clothing can be activated by a double tap to save users' backs. Read More

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given clearance to market and sell the powered lower-limb exoskeleton created by a team of Vanderbilt engineers and commercialized by the Parker Hannifin Corporation for both clinical and personal use in the United States. Read More

In his effort to develop better prosthetic limbs, Karl Zelik had to start with deciphering more clearly how muscles function in walking. His path not only led to a better way of quantifying human locomotion, but also to the discovery that muscles around the hip and in the foot are more important to walking than previously thought. Read More

College tennis champ Eric Honert is focusing on a new challenge as a graduate student in mechanical engineering: building a better prosthetic toe. Read More

The prosthetics research of Michael Goldfarb is featured in "The NBIB Bionic Man," an interactive web tool that helps students and the public learn about innovative federally-funded biomedical research. Read More

Michael Goldfarb, named by "Popular Mechanics" as one of the “10 Innovators Who Changed the World in 2013,” will deliver the March 25 Chancellor’s Lecture at Vanderbilt University. Read More

Recent advances in robotics technology make it possible to create prosthetics that can duplicate the natural movement of human legs which promises to dramatically improve the mobility of lower-limb amputees. Read More

In the foreseeable future, robots will be sticking steerable needles in your brain to remove blood clots; capsule robots will be crawling up your colon as a painless replacement for the colonoscopy; and ultra-miniaturized snake robots will remove tumors from your bladder and other body cavities. Read More

Within the next one to three years, "bionic" prosthetic devices will become available for the people whose limbs were amputated in the Boston Marathon bombing that are substantially smarter, more capable, more active and more interactive than those currently on the market. Read More

An amputee using a prosthetic leg designed at Vanderbilt made history by climbing 103 flights of stairs to the top of a Chicago skyscraper. Read More

A team of Vanderbilt engineers has developed a powered exoskeleton that enables people with severe spinal cord injuries to stand, walk, sit and climb stairs. Its light weight, compact size and modular design promise to provide users with an unprecedented degree of independence. Read More

Two mechanical engineering graduate students and their professor have received the Wyss Institute-IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Award for Translational Research for their work on a robotic leg prosthesis, selected from submissions by biomedical engineers and scientists from academic institutions worldwide. Read More

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Two years after losing his leg in a shark attack, Craig Hutto became the test pilot for a unique and powerful new prosthetic leg being developed by mechanical engineer Michael Goldfarb and his team at Vanderbilt University. Read More