April 13th, 2009
Dean Kamen cooks up bionic arm; Vets may benefit
When Dean Kamen invented the Segway it was quite a breakthrough. But U.S. military veterans may be remember Kamen much more for creating bionic arms that will replace the clunky prosthetics of today.
60 Minutes on Sunday detailed the Pentagon’s $100 million program dubbed Revolutionizing Prosthetics.” In a nutshell, the Pentagon is spending to create fully functional arms for soldiers that are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with missing limbs. The Pentagon approached Kamen to help and DEKA Research and Development, Kamen’s company, created the Deka Arm.
Judging from the video Kamen could be making his biggest contribution to society yet. For the entire, story check out 60 Minutes recap and the video embedded below.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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