Empowering through innovation

The four person team from ICL, created a new technology that can detect the wearer’s intent from sub-conscious muscle contractions, used to help control the tremor for Parkinsons sufferers.

Koalaa is a spin out from an Imperial College London's Masters student project. They designed comfortable, quickly available, affordable prosthetics for all ages. Alex has been able to utilise his design skills, working with Koalaa, to ensure the the end products are fundamentally rooted in the end user’s experience.

Created by Masters students at Imperial College London this inclusive interface empowers people to freely interact with technologies based on their body conditions. Aided by Alex the project won Dezeen Wearable Design 2020. The judges said “Giving someone with disability more ability and flexibility is something we should be seeing far more of in design, this project is truly inspirational."

Working with Dr Nicola Bailey’s students at Kings College London, Alex was able to provide vital end user feedback. Together they designed and develop hybrid myo electric body powered prosthetic arms.

Alex consulted on the design and testing of non humanoid robotic prosthetic hands. Imperial College London has developed a set of modular terminal devices, moving away from the traditional hand form that greatly improve user performance.

The Wild Wheelchairs Project team at Southampton University designed and developmed a solar assisted, battery powered 4 wheeled hand cycle. Specifically for amputees this solar powered, desert ready hand cycle was capable of being powered, driven and steered by Alex It enabled him to complete is Namib 500 Challenge in aid of the Murray Parish Trust.

Alex was involved in assisting University of Bath researcher Sam Walters, in developing a hybrid prosthetic wrist unit for amputees. Her concept combines the traditional body-powered terminal device with a wrist unit controlled through the activation of a user’s muscles.

A collaborative project, led by Dr Nicola Bailey and Dr Elena Seminati at the University of Bath, hopes to dramatically speed up the long, laborious socket fit process. They believe this could have big impacts on patient rehabilitation in the UK and internationally, in particular across low- and middle-income countries.