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The Bionic Man
Hugh Herr, head of Biomechatronics at MIT
Hugh Herr at Ted2014. (Photo: Ryan Lash, Flickr/Ted Conference, CC BY-NC 2.0)
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Hugh Herr is the director and personal investigator of the Biomechatronics research group at the MIT Media Laboratory. He is also the founder BiOM, a prosthetic company, transitioning prosthetics into Personal Bionics.
TED Talks
Watching the biophysicist and engineer Hugh Herr walking, running and jumping on the stage during a TedTalk presentation with his bionic legs laid bare for all to see is as about as uncanny as it can get. He is a human with mechanical augmentations that potentially render him superhuman, yet he moves with the natural ease and grace of any “able-bodied” mortal.
Hugh Herr is a bilateral amputee who has contributed greatly to the shift in perception from disability to advantage – through technology. He lost both of his legs below the knee to frostbite whilst mountain climbing at the age of eighteen in 1982. Prosthetics back then were crude, so Herr, a passionate climber, decided to make some improvements to allow him to get back on the mountain.
Herr not only custom-designed his own legs, but went on to master the field of mechanical engineering and complete a Ph.D. in biophysics. He is now head of the Biomechatronics Group at the MIT Media Lab, designing bionic prosthetics such as the BiOM T2 system, which responds to neural command, and which he uses himself for walking. Additionally, his group is also developing the technologies of human augmentation (both for “disabled” and “enabled”) in the form of bionic exoskeletons. The underlying goal of the group is to explore technological interfaces that will ultimately merge our built world with nature.
The future that Hugh Herr and his team are envisaging is one of extreme bionics, a future where not only disability is eliminated, but where humans will be able to enhance their brains and bodies; a future where the narratives of disability are reversed; a future where cyborgs are commonplace and human hybrids the order of the day; a future that is already here.
(sf) Photo: Andrew Kornylak / Aurora Photos
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