11/04/2018 - News, Projects
Aalborg, Denmark, 16-20 april 2018: Erasmus We Are The Makers
Reading time: 2 minutesWe Are the Makers! is an Erasmus + project, led by the Kepler High School in Weil der Stadt, Germany, and of which the Robotics School is a partner. The project is co-funded by the European Commission in the Erasmus Plus Programme
We Are the Makers! is an Erasmus + project, led by the Kepler High School in Weil der Stadt, Germany, and of which the Robotics School is a partner. The project is co-funded by the European Commission in the Erasmus Plus Programme (ERASMUS+ PROGRAMME, STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS (KEY ACTION 2), AGREEMENT NUMBER 2017- VG-IN-BW-17-36-035615)
An important news about the development of low-cost 3D myoelectric upper limbs. The e-nable France community is making a two-finger mobility 3D prosthesis using an Arduino for two-finger control. Myofelectricity exploits the weak bioelectric currents generated by muscle activity and derived from the skin: these, suitably amplified and integrated, can act on a relay and close a circuit, allowing a battery to start a micromotor, to put the prosthetic equipment into action.
A brief account by Philippe (philippe@e-nable.fr) of the e-nable France community is given below.
"Since 2017, we have been discussing in the e-nable France community the need to find solutions to make 3D arts at low cost. In fact, we would have liked to have provided many teenagers with more advanced 3D arms, waiting for them to become adults and receive the bionic arts. The project was about the possibility of printing the arts as the children grew up, preserving electronics.
"Thanks to a sponsor we had the opportunity to establish a partnership with the Innovation Pole (RetD, robotique) of Extia (https://www.extia.fr).
"We had already made an Unlimbited arm for a 12 year old girl, Ana. Ana was the perfect candidate for our adventure, because she was already using her Unlimbited arm a lot and is interested in the 3D press, where she works with her school club.
"In agreement with Extia we decided to start with the exiii-hackberry model (http://exiii-hackberry.com/), whose files are open source: this has allowed us to focus on improving the electronic part and reducing costs.
"We printed with ABS plastic with some modifications compared to open files (battery, switch...) and to lower costs we printed some of the electronics (the circuits).
We have also created a tutorial for those who want to print the arm on their own. E-nable did a scan of Ana's arm to produce the 3D arm padding, which we did in collaboration with an ortho-prosthetist.
"Ana then learned to use the prototype (you can see the video on Facebook E-nable France (https://www.facebook.com/enableFrance/?ref=br_rs), the myoelectric captors and the use of Arduino (she learned to download the programs that we were gradually making for controlling the arm electronics).
"Ana will soon have the final myoelectric arm. A similar arm could cost between 400 and 450 euros. A great success!
The project We Are the Makers! Erasmus + was born from the collaboration between the partners (from Germany, France, Denmark, Romania and Italy) around the humanitarian activities of the e-nable association, which at an international level creates 3D printed hands for children and young people suffering from agenesis or, in this case, the lack of a limb in whole or in part.
The project foresees that many French, Tedechi, Roman, Danish and Italian students, followed by teachers, learn to draw in 3D and make objects with almost professional characteristics, so that they can then make their hands in 3D for children followed by e-nable France.
Together with this training, teachers and students partner of the project will develop with Arduino small intelligent objects to connect to 3D hands so that children with disabilities can, thanks to these "increased hands", interact with the environment in a better way.
The E-Nable community was inspired by an American maker and a South African carpenter, who, while unknown to each other, came together to create the first prosthetic handheld device for a small child in South Africa. They then put those plans online for anyone who wanted to use, modify or customize them for free, so anyone who needed a low-cost prosthesis would have access to their designs. That act of simple human goodness has since exploded into the massive E-Nable movement that none of the original designers' hands could ever have imagined.
Partners:
Johannes-Kepler-Gymnasium Weil der Stadt (Germany) (leader)
Scuola di Robotica (Italy)
E-nable (France)
EDUMOTIVA (Greece)
Universitatea Valahia in Targoviste (Romania)
Create It Real (Denmark)