With Open-Source Arms

"With Open-Source Arms" by Sam Boykin (Scientific American, October, 2008).

In this article, Boykin tries to tie three phenomena together: 1) prosthetic limb design; 2) open-source, collaborative development; and 3) the relatively large number of recent, Iraq veterans needing prosthetic limbs.

Although there are many amputees in the United States, most are people over 50 who have lost a foot to diabetes or other ailments. Very few need upper-appendage replacements. Despite the tens of thousands of American soldiers who have been wounded in Iraq, less than 200 have lost an upper limb. The market for these devices is very small.

Because the market is so small, innovation in the technologies is quite limited. The subject of the article, Jonathan Kuniholm, himself a veteran-amputee, attempts to address this problem by "open-sourcing" robotic arm designs. In one specific case, he and others work to improve the design of one of the traditional "hook" appendages.

In the end, though, because the market is too small, no one wants to produce or distribute this new, better design. Almost as an afterthought, Boykin mentions the idea of lead-user research, essentially the idea that early adopters become developers, field application engineers, and generally valuable contributors to a product. However, he does not show a path by which lead-user research will somehow cause products that aren't profitable to start being profitable.