The world’s first prosthetic legs made out of special kind of cane allows an amputee to walk, run and dance with greater ease as it is light-weight and has compliant spring. Meet Arun Cherian, founder of Rise Legs, the Bangalore based startup behind this innovative cane legs.
Arun , it is a brilliant and game changing concept, please tell us a about your company and the idea?
Rise Legs is a startup company with just four employees based in Bangalore. We make high quality, cost effective mobility aids for the masses not only for India but also for countries in Asia, Africa and South America. Right now, we are making sports wheelchairs for basketball and tennis and prosthetic legs made out of cane, which is like bamboo.
I am a robotics engineer in biomechanical locomotion. I have studied how animals and humans walk and run. Legs of any animal be it elephant or giraffe or spider or human - mathematically we all walk and run the same way. The leg is like a spring with acute stiffness. You have sports people running with these funny looking legs possibly better than able bodied people. These are springs, which is the reason why they run faster.
What I have done is introduced cane, a special kind of cane with a unique fibre property, which makes it like a spring. It is not like springs we have in cars –spiral or helical. This is a different class of spring called compliant spring. This is very cost effective prosthetic leg which allows people to walk, run and dance too. We have amputees, with Rise Legs fitted in, who have done marathons, crossed obstacles, climbed walls, and danced.
Can you share with us the success and challenges?
In terms of success, the proof is in the pudding. We have Rise Legs users as fitness trainers for able bodied, as body builders, as marathon runners, as dancers. One of the amputees who had lost both her legs was previously fitted with other prosthetic legs and used a walker for mobility. But now with Rise Legs she no more uses a walker and in fact has become a good dancer.
Tell us about the team that went for Cybathlon, Zurich?
We went on to compete at The Cybathlon 2016, in Zurich, Switzerland. It is an international competition organised for disabled competitors using bionic assistive technology, such as robotic prostheses, brain-computer interfaces and powered exoskeletons. We had the honour of being the only team from India and from Asia along with Japan. We competed with the best in the world. Otto Bock, the German prosthetics company, came with a hundred thousand dollar prosthetic leg. While we had two boys participating in 3 races, using Rise Legs which was just costing a few hundred dollars (the cost was higher due to the sports need), our boys stood first in 2 races and second in the third race.
What has been the experience at Cybathlon?
As said earlier, our performance was appreciated by The International Committee for the Red Cross and is looking at Rise Legs as a portfolio product. With their reach in 80 countries, we are hope for a quick access. In fact on seeing our performance, the founder of Cybathlon commented –“Rise Legs shows it is important to develop appropriate technology than just power technology.” That was my happy moment as a robotosist on being able to create an affordable cane leg which allows a person to walk, run, dance, work and live a life as he or she wishes to the fullest.
Arun, how is the feedback of the field tests outside the sports arena?
Outside sports, we also have cases like the one of a 42-year old farmer, who was previously using Jaipur leg, which weighed 7 kg, due which he would feel tired within 3 hours. But with Rise Legs, which is 2.5 to 3 kgs and also has a spring like effect, he is able to work for 13 hours as a wine yard supervisor.
There are many small sweet success stories like this person who was using an American prosthetic leg which needed him to wear footwear all the time. This restricted him from entering temple. After Rise Legs were fitted he went to a temple after 6 long years, and the first thing he did after coming out was to call to thank me.
There are many challenges too. The perception that since it is made of wood it will break. We actually tested it with three times the person’s weight and encourage the users to try and break it. The medical community also doubts the reliability of a product made of cane. But with the steady success; the hospitals are reaching out to us. Yes, sourcing the cane is a challenge but it is something which is solvable.
What is the response for the cane sports wheel chair?
Till now we have a very positive feedback on sports wheel chairs too. A regular motorised sports wheel chair made in US and assembled in China weighs around 23 kgs while the cane one is 9 kgs. The person can hold the ball in hand and turn the wheel chair by wriggling the hip. It is custom built and is sought by ICRC and other sports associations.
The challenge is to find talented human resource to make the high quality wheel chairs. We hope to solve this in the next couple of months.
What has been the learning so far?
There have been many learning in our journey so far. There has been some challenge with the waterproofing of the prosthetic legs. One of our Rise Legs users is a paddy farmer who encountered this problem, so we worked on it. Even though the end users were very happy with the affordable and light weight cane leg they wanted it to look more realistic. So again we started working on the cosmetic appearance, giving it a skin texture and tone. Prosthetic manufactures from US are inquiring on this. We are looking at help from NIFT to add more artistic value and custom made art work on the prosthetic leg.
What are your future plans?
There is some fine-tuning to be done which is why we are still doing end to end work and prototyping and working on a small scale. Our priority is to build a team, overcome the challenges and spend on automating the process –be it measuring or fitting. We would be working on the Aravind Eye Hospital model of mechanising the process as there are very few prosthetic makers for a geographically vast India. We are partnering with MIT, Boston, ICRC, multiple partners in US and Europe, CMC Vellore, St John’s Hospital, Bangalore to automate the production.
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We are in a people’s business and Rise Legs improves the quality of life with prosthetic legs and sports wheelchairs so the need for mechanization to maintain high quality. We will support the users with Rise Leg program of sports and dance. We create awareness; provide world class coaches, fitness trainers, nutritionists to our end users. We are looking at affordable, accessible, high quality device throughout India and countries in Asia, Africa and South America.
(Arun Cherian quit his PhD in Mechanical engineering at Purdue University, USA and founded Rise Legs. Previously, he had been a researcher at University of California, Berkeley developing wearable soft-exoskeletal suits to help the paralyzed people walk.)
This article has been republished here in arrangement with Connect Special, a digital magazine, which provides solutions for challenges faced by people with disability.
