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TECHNOLOGY SUCH AS artificial intelligence, 3D printing, robotics, and assistive devices when first introduced are often cast as either modern day villains or heroes. The truth is, advanced products and services in the tech sector are typically agnostic. In themselves, they carry no implicit morality and yet, depending on the creator, user or application, they hold the potential to become ground-breaking and helpful in serving people with specific needs or advancements in a science or other application.
Deliberately searching for companies and people using, developing, and sharing innovative products with new technologies to benefit human beings, we focused on two operations. San Francisco-based CIONIC and the SpaceCAL initiative at University of California, Berkeley, provide real life models.
CIONIC: Wrapping up assistive mobility
CIONIC was founded in 2018 by Jeremiah Robison, whose 20-plus year career in technology includes work at Apple, Slide, Openwave, and Jawbone. After his daughter was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and faced with a life dependent on crutches, walkers, and wheelchairs, Robison turned his entrepreneurial energy toward assistive systems and wearable devices that might support more independent mobility. The company’s first product, the Neural Sleeve, recently received FDA approval. The leg wrap helps people with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, or individuals who have suffered a stroke by enabling them to walk more freely and for longer durations.
Most innovative of all: the device’s integrated machine learning capacity and associated apps allow the Neural Sleeve to be customized and regularly updated to best serve the individual wearer. Working with experts in Parkinson’s disease and people with osteoarthritis, the company hopes to expand its range with new devices aimed at regaining or increasing functional movement for a wider variety of conditions.
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In an interview, Robison said his daughter, Sophia, at age 15 is independently mobile and uses assistive orthotic devices while rock-climbing, skiing, swimming, and in daily life. Although Robison is able to supply the device for his young daughter, it has only been approved commercially for people 22 and older. Designing a commercially viable sleeve for younger people involves several factors — all of which require considerable funding.
“It’s largely capital we need,” Robison said. “Then, it’s sizing and timing it for release at scale. Smaller bodies mean downsizing the components, such as the hydrogel pads that are like what’s used in electrical stimulation therapy. We’d have to convince our current vendor to build those scaled-down electrodes.”
With any medical technology, there are regulatory components that largely impact timing. The FDA is transparent in its requirements, providing feedback during the development and manufacturing process and mostly predictable, according to Robison. What’s less clear is the medical reimbursement process.
“The FDA is responsible for making sure companies are making their products safe and effective,” Robison said. “But there’s no mandate saying insurance companies have to pay for something. In pediatrics, there’s a high overlap of socio-economic disadvantage and childhood disability, so building through Medicaid is important. Most insurers will take their time. You have to convince them the product makes sense economically for them to pay for.” On average, Robison said it takes 10 years to receive FDA approval for medical products.
“… The more everybody sees this device as aspirational, as human adaptation and less as assistive, the more they’ll want to wear one or not say to someone wearing it, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. What happened to you?’”
Jeremiah Robison, CIONIC founder
The unique features of the sleeve are made possible only through advancements in technology and refinements in design and manufacturing for wearable devices. Among others, the sleeve has an array of electrodes (instead of a single one) to communicate adaptations that customize the complex and changeable muscle activities needed to ambulate. Eight different muscle groups can be activated, and the software and AI that stimulate movement patterns are responsive to walking, sitting, climbing stairs, and other activities. “AI and algorithms have unlocked the potential. It’s huge, and makes the sleeve scalable and more applicable,” Robison said.
Designing a device integrating electrical circuitry and hard materials into a soft fabric that is comfortable, breathable, lightweight, but also durable wasn’t easy. The ability to put the sleeve on independently was crucial. “If people can’t put it on themselves, you immediately take away that value, something especially important to people with disabilities,” he said.
Once the technology met CIONIC’s clinical standards, the company worked with Swiss industrial designer Yves Béhar and his firm, fuseproject, on the design. They took scientific principles and created a sleeve that has a sporty look and can be worn underneath clothing and put on easily, even for a person with only one functional arm. “We took inspiration from the WNBA and the wraps those athletes wear. In my grand plan, the more everybody sees this device as aspirational, as human adaptation and less as assistive, the more they’ll want to wear one or not say to someone wearing it, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. What happened to you?’”
When machine learning, improved algorithms, microsizing of components, and personal motivation like Robison’s combine, he suggested innovative products appear. CIONIC work has benefited from advancements in the automotive industry which improved the ability to embroider wires into soft goods, as well as venture capitalists’ appetite for investing in banking, vehicle autonomy, space exploration, and large public health initiatives, which enabled the small venture-backed startup to move forward. “Seeing the opportunity, recognizing the threat to human health or the environment of not moving forward, and knowing the success of an industry means they’re taking on bigger challenges,” he said.
SpaceCAL: Revolutionizing the future of 3D printing
Large challenges, customization, cutting-edge design theory, innovative manufacturing processes, and the potential to serve broader markets in the future are also major components of work and research being performed at UC Berkeley’s Engineering Department.
In June 2024, a next-generation microgravity printer given the name “SpaceCAL” was sent into suborbital space as part of the Virgin Galactic 07 mission. During its 140 seconds of operations, it autonomously printed and post-processed a variety of test parts, each made from a liquid plastic called PEGDA. The team of Berkeley researchers led by Ph.D. Candidate Taylor Waddell predicted it will be used in future missions to manufacture tools and parts for spacecraft, new contact lenses, skin grafts, dental crowns, and emergency medicine for astronauts, and other items.
Waddell became fascinated by 3D printing while an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and as a NASA Pathways Engineer. At Cal, working with his team in Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Hayden Taylor’s nanoscale manufacturing lab, the $1.4 million SpaceCAL project was made possible with support from the school, Virgin Galactic and a grant from NASA. Partners including the Canadian National Research Council, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, and Fung Institution also contributed to the efforts.
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The SpaceCAL printer carries notable features that give it tremendous speed, the ability to print with dozens of materials, and other ground-breaking capacities. “What makes it inherently different is that it’s layer-less. Traditional 3D printing lays down a line and forms the object from the bottom up,” Waddell said. “With our printer, all of the geometry forms out of the liquid at once. It can make complex parts in 20 seconds. And it’s less wasteful because it prints no extra parts. It can even do bio-printing that allows it to print human organs.”
Mathematical techniques applied to CT scans are borrowed, which means the printer shines light through a 2D image all at once and long enough to print it in 3D. The process has been years in the making, but today new technology and algorithms result in increased innovative manufacturing allow it to print over modeled forms of existing objects like hearing aids and other goods. “Imagine going into an Apple Store and you could order an iPod, mouse, and earphones customized to you,” he said.
To use the technology in a microgravity environment, where parts can break unpredictably, became the team’s primary goal.
“Things can go wrong in space,” Waddell said. “We knew the printer was already a good tool for astronauts, but to fly in space it has to withstand very harsh launch environments and be safe because people are on that rocket. The liquids have to be contained, backups and proper techniques implemented, and it all has to be designed to fit in the rocket and be able to deal with electrical matters.”
The size, weight, and power of every element — known by the NASA acronym “SWAP” — must fall into balance. A safe, lightweight, small package best serves the crew’s need for manufacturing on-the-go. “This printer means you don’t need to bring as many backups and the extra mass of materials to replace broken parts,” Waddell said. “You bring just the raw essentials to make them. And being able to make skin grafts for burns or dental crowns for chipped teeth … astronauts are going into space; what are they going to do if they can’t replace them right away?”
“We knew the printer was already a good tool for astronauts, but to fly in space it has to withstand very harsh launch environments and be safe because people are on that rocket. … And it all has to be designed to fit in the rocket and be able to deal with electrical matters.”
Taylor Waddell, SpaceCAL researcher
Looking into the future, Waddell said the printer’s superior ability to use biomaterials and to print in space’s cell-building-friendly environment holds terrific potential. “I see it manufacturing replacement parts such as hearts and lungs and bringing them back to earth for people who need them,” Waddell said. “I can see it used here on earth for all kinds of electronics, hardware tool handles, and more. One of the great things is we don’t know what it will enable. Probably a lot of the crazy things possible now were never thought of when 3D was first invented.”
Of course, with all its benefits, technological innovation involves risk. An effort can fail on scientific levels, misread consumer demand, create products that take what seems an eternity to be approved, arrive with poor timing, or face other downturns.
As Cionic’s Robison said: “I point to Google glasses as a mistake in wearables. It was, ‘Let’s put technology on a body and hope there’s a use where it makes sense.’ Starting with the idea of building an assistive device is the wrong approach. Instead, it’s identifying a need — in my case, my daughter’s and individuals with similar conditions — and taking that ambition to products that can broaden and serve a larger market.
“As our population ages, there will be other muscular impairments we can address. Walking is highly predictable, but taking this technology to the upper body is more complex. If we grow the components, understand more about neuroplasticity, and build the right AI systems, we can address more conditions and help people live independently in better health. Amplifying the neuroplastic carryover component of the device will be key to unlocking the human body’s fullest potential.”
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