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TED2014: Boston bombing victim trips the light fantastic
Post: 2014-09-29 15:50  View:1007

TED2014: Boston bombing victim trips the light fantastic with new leg

 

Christian Lightner and Adrianne Haslet-Davis at TED2014 in Vancouver. Dance instructor Haslet-Davis lost her leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, but is dancing again thank to a new high-tech prosthetic. Courtesy James Duncan Davidson/TED.

 

 

 

VANCOUVER -- Looking as if she was performing as she had as a dance instructor, Adrianne Haslet-Davis stepped on to the main stage at the TED conference Wednesday and elegantly moved across the floor.

 

Dressed in a glittering white, sequined outfit, she twirled and stepped and swung, as her partner Christian Lightner gently guided her. It might have simply been another entertainment performance at TED, but in this case, it was Haslet-Davis’ first public performance since a bomb blew off her left leg in last year’s Boston Marathon bombing.

 

Replacing Haslet-Davis’ leg is a new and highly computerized prosthetic developed by another amputee, Hugh Herr, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab.

 

This was a marriage of high science, raw determination and angry stare-down of the effects terrorists hope they instil when they set off explosives like the one that nearly killed Haslet-Davis.

 

Only once did Haslet-Davis stumble ever so slightly, and she raised her hand to her mouth in emotion. But to the packed crowd in the TED theatre, it made no difference. They gave her a thunderous standing ovation, and not a few people had tears in their eyes. Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, a TED attendee, later came over and congratulated her.

 

Haslet-Davis, 33, has become the newest public symbol of courage in the face of terrorism, enabled by computerized advancements in prosthetic technology Herr developed over the years as a result of his losing his own two legs in a climbing accident in 1982.

 

Herr gave a talk at TED outlining the newest developments in his work and explained how computer chips and programming now give to amputees devices that are more efficient and progressive than ordinary limbs. Climb a mountain? Sure. He’s done it.

 

Herr said he was motivated to help Haslet-Davis after he met her during a speech at Boston’s Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. He’d gone there to talk to families of the bombing victims. After hearing that she was a professional dancer, he felt he could help her.

 

“In 3.5 seconds, the criminals and cowards took Adrianne off the dance floor. In 200 days we put her back. We will not be intimidated, brought down, diminished, conquered or stopped by acts of violence,” Herr told the TED audience to applause.

 

“After meeting her and driving home in my car I thought I’m an MIT professor, I have resources, let’s build her a bionic limb to allow her to back to her life of dance,” he said.

 

But developing a bionic prosthesis to recognize the repetitive motions of walking is one thing. Getting one to recognize non-repetitive movements such as dancing is quite another, he said. Using a team of researchers, he recruited dancers of similar size and electronically mapped their movements. The team then programmed a bionic leg to anticipate those movements.

 

Haslet-Davis is still emotionally affected by the bombing and found the media attention from her performance draining. She declined most interviews, but did a brief one with CBC Radio, which shared it with other media.

 

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials from the Vancouver Sun. 

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above


 

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