Alt-Bionics is a start-up company that is committed to creating affordable bionic prostheses for those who could otherwise not afford them. The goal of the company is to apply new, advanced, and low-cost technologies to medical devices in order to display the capabilities that are similar in both form and function to higher-priced devices. Mr. Ryan Saavedra, CEO - Alt Bionics, himself started this as a college project when he just graduated and now, is building a company around it. To know more about the company and how he is planning to take these devices into the market, we had a conversation with him.
Q. Give a brief overview of Alt-Bionics and what’s the inspiration behind working in the field of prosthetic devices?
Ryan started with his independent research in the field of Electrical Engineering and came across the field of robotics and how it is applied in prosthetic devices. He came across a man named Johnny Matheny, who had the most advanced bionic arm in the world that was developed by John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory after $120 million in research. He was amazed to know the commercial prices of these devices which were anywhere from $10,000 to $150,000. This inspired him to make these devices for less and that’s how his journey begins.
Q. How did the company take off the ground and how has been the journey over these years?
Ryan in his college years did independent research into electromyography sensors and neuromuscular control to see if he could find some type of medium or hand to build and prove that this device could be made for less. In the university's yearly Technology Symposium, he along with his college team built an AI-enhanced bionic prosthetic device that costs $600. This hand came with touch responsive haptic feedback which means when you shook the hand, the little LED on the ring at the back lit up like a stoplight from green to yellow or red based on its strength. It features AI-enhanced electromyography sensors to detect what the user is trying to do based on neuromuscular signals. It was just a project for him until he met a military veteran (Ryan Davis) who’d lost his hand in the service, used this hand. At that moment Ryan gained passion for turning this into something more.
Q. Was the first prototype 3D printed?
Brunel hand 2.0 is an open-source design from Open Bionics based out of the UK. This whole hand is 3d printed except the front which is made up of polyurethane. There is a NeoPixel ring from Adafruit on the back. This hand was very inexpensive and ended up at around 600 bucks only.
Q.Give a brief description of the first project Genesis (the robotic hand), including where it is now and how far it is from market readiness?
Highly accessible and modular Genesis, is the first product of Alt Bionics which is going to be released in the market. Mark 37 is the most recent version of the hand and it doesn’t have polyurethane. The team has gone through 38 iterations of this and is still experimenting with the urethane molds to best accommodate haptic feedback sensors. Also, they’ve modified the NeoPixel and made it a more hexagonal shape to represent the logo of the company.
Q. A primary goal of Alt-bionics is to “Make Advanced Prosthetic devices affordable”. How does the company plan on doing it?
The first reason behind this is that the entire hand is 3d printed and a special type of 3d printing called Multi Jet Fusion is used. Off-the-shelf components and polyurethane synthetic skin are some other components that make this hand affordable.
Q. The Bionic Hand from Alt-bionics uses Artificial Intelligence to learn different wrist patterns of an amputee to improve performance. How AI is leveraged in bionic hand?
There are EMG sensors inside the hand to detect the electrochemical signals that your brain sends to your muscles. These signals are then converted into five-volt signal and then processed through an AI system. Ryan stated, “If I say, make a grip (like a fist), this AI would be recording this grip for around 10 seconds. After a certain number of data points, it would understand that, okay, whenever those signals went into the controller, the A.I would remember that grip and will execute that grip pattern.” That's how AI determines what the user is trying to do. It's a bit of a training process like 10 to 20 minutes of training and then you're able to use the hand very competently.
Q. What have been the major technical challenges while building a medical-grade prosthetic device?
FDA regulatory process is probably the biggest limiting factor in getting this thing to market, as some want clinical trials, while others would want you to prove out that these are subject to design controls and built with a quality management system in place.
Q. What’s the “go to market” plan for Bionic Hand? Which market is going to be the key target?
The initial target for selling these products will be prosthetic and orthotic clinics. The company will partner with prosthetic and orthotic clinics so that they can attach the hand to this socket system which they make for the amputee or person with congenital differences.
“It's a pretty straightforward market strategy. The prosthetic and orthotic clinics buy these from manufacturers like us, and then they sell them to the amputee. Then those are reimbursed under L-codes from insurance companies in the US. Sometimes they can be reimbursed for the full cost. ours could effectively be zero cost of the amputee and others most likely not. There's still going to be a charge for other bionic hands in the market because they're so expensive.”
Q. Explain the features and working of the bionic hand?
Each finger of the bionic hand has a motor that means one can have an individual motion for every finger and the thumb has four degrees of freedom but the wrist is fixed. There are six primary grip patterns along with four sensors embedded within the fingertips that will be proportionately mapped to the LED ring on the back. The LED will light up if you're shaking a hand or pushing down on something. Also, the color of the LED will change based on how hard somebody is interacting with the hand. Moreover, there are two modes of feedback which are visual and haptic.
Q. How the entire setup is powered up?
There are medical-grade options available in the market that are approved for use in such products.
“We're not selling our own batteries and are going to recommend battery systems to work with. We think we're using one from steeper right now which are pretty beefy batteries. I think right now from a 2200 milliamp-hour battery, we were able to get seven to eight hours of battery life and it was still at its full charge. We managed to pull out some pretty incredible battery life from this. But we're looking for 8-16 hours of battery life.”
Q. Would you like to add anything else?
“One of my biggest missions is to try to help and inspire people to get into this field. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at altbionics@gmail.com. Let's associate with all our social media and everything. I always respond to messages either on Instagram or on my email. If you ever have any questions, just let me know and even if you need some inspiration for electrical engineering degree, feel free to message me.”
