Prosthetic limbs can range from $8,000–$10,000, a price that most insurance companies try to shirk because children outgrow them so quickly. That’s where NC State alumni Brian Kaminski found his niche in the biomedical engineering world: creating affordable prosthetic limbs for children using muscle sensors and 3-D printing technology.
These “robotic arms,” as Kaminski refers to them, have caught national attention thanks to Robert Downey Jr., who plays Iron Man, who presented one of the prosthetic limbs to a young boy who was missing his right arm.
“I was so excited to see what I created shown on TV,” Kaminski said. “That’s exactly why I started in the first place. This was the perfect example of my initial vision for the company.”
The idea started with Kaminski’s senior design project. He was working on a robotic glove but found he couldn’t just buy a muscle sensor off the shelf.
“You had to design it from the ground up,” Kaminski said. “They are made for hospitals for medical use but not for research.”
Creating the muscle sensors is Kaminski’s forte and is one of the most important elements in the robotic glove.
“The brain sends messages to your muscle to start flexing,” he said. “The sensor takes that message and interprets it to make the motion.”
Kaminski abandoned the research, yet picked right back up after completing graduate school at University of Michigan and founded his own company, Advancer Technologies.
The company is now in its fifth year and aims to cultivate and educate the next great minds and ideas in the field, according to Kaminski. The company posts tutorials and videos to help other students create robotic gloves.
However, Kaminski began to assemble and sell the robotic glove as one whole piece after the tutorials and videos “went viral” and customers wanted a preassembled one.
“I figured I could make some beer money, and my wife wouldn’t get mad for building robots in the attic,” Kaminski said. “And sales grew really quickly — more than I thought they would.”
He later re-designed the blueprint for making the robotic glove and uploaded it to a manufacturer who distributed it. Kaminski has since sold more than 5,000 robotic gloves.
Kaminski then partnered with Limbitless Solutions, a nonprofit that allows for the 3-D printing of the robotic glove, cutting the price of prosthetics to about $300.
Advancer Technologies and Limbitless Solutions decided to embark on a charitable endeavor by posting their technology on Kickstarter, a global crowdfunding platform. For every five backers of $25 or more, the companies donate a MyoWare sensor to a child in need. There’s also an option where a backer can directly donate a muscle sensor.
“This story is one of the most inspiring ones coming out of the engineering department,” said Michael Williams, a sophomore studying civil engineering. “Imagine how good the world would be if everyone used their degree in this way.”
Kaminski said he owes his company’s success to his education at NC State.
“Without that curriculum and exposure, none of this would be possible,” he said. “I was exposed to physiology and biomechanics, and without that I could never do this type of work.”
