Elderly And Disabled Assistive Technology Market To Surpass $26 Billion By 2024

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide. 70 million people need a wheelchair. Another 360 million people globally have moderate to profound hearing loss. Globally, more than 1 billion people need one or more assistive products.

The global elderly and disabled assistive devices market was valued at $14 billion in 2015 and is expected to surpass $26 billion by 2024, according to Coherent Market Insights. It is a sizable market with an incredibly diverse set of needs. Many products have to be customized which is why 3D printing is an ideal way to study and solve some of it.

Photo from MatterHackers Envision the Future Design Challeng

MatterHackers, one of the largest 3D printing retailers in the U.S., wants to put a big dent in those numbers by encouraging inspiring, low-cost or free, assistive device models that people can 3D print or build from some other material. Officially, the “Envision The Future Design Challenge” is to create educational tactile models and assistive devices for the blind and visually impaired.

WHO defines assistive technology as any product that helps maintain or improve an individual function. Hearing aids, wheelchairs, eyeglasses, prostheses, pill organizers, and memory aids are all examples of assistive devices or products. You do not have to go far in 3D printing circles to find solutions or at least potential ideas to solve these sorts of problems or issues -- and I have written about many of them -- from custom insoles (orthotics) to hearing aids to haptic feedback in a glove (one of my very first posts over 5 years ago).

With an aging global population and a rise in noncommunicable diseases, more than 2 billion people will need at least 1 assistive product by 2050, with many older people needing 2 or more, according to a WHO assistive device fact sheet.

With an aging global population and a rise in noncommunicable diseases, more than 2 billion people will need at least 1 assistive product by 2050, with many older people needing 2 or more, according to a WHO assistive device fact sheet.

One of the more famous assistive device designs, not part of the MatterHackers design challenge, comes from the e-NABLE Community: the “Iron Man” video tells the story of Robert Downey Jr. giving an Ironman prosthetic hand to a child. Awesome video. That design was developed by the UCF Armory (University of Central Florida), led by Albert Manero, the Limbitless Arm was e-NABLE’s first myoelectric design. The Limbitless Arm is licensed under the Creative Commons-Attribution-Non-Commercial license. Success stories like these inspire more people to realize how accessible 3D technology is making incremental and exponential improvements possible -- that you might have an idea that could change the world for you or someone else.

Given that so many people have a need for assistive devices and products across a wide range; 3D printing is one of the best ways to approach the problems. If you look at an organization like Enabling The Future, that crowdsources the making of 3D printable prosthetic hands, a design challenge can provide new ideas and solutions that might not otherwise make it to market. Plus, it spreads the word and inspires more people, design-minded people, to consider how they might approach this massive market need and opportunity.

Additional resources:

Briefly, because everyone wants to know about prizes when there's a challenge like the Envision The Future Design Challenge, there are two categories: Youth (under 18) and Adults (18 and over). Each category will have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners with prizes sponsored by LulzBot and MatterHackers. Youth grand prize is a Lulzbot Mini 3D Printer (don’t let the name fool you; it is a decent size printer). Adult grand prize is a Lulzbot TAZ 6 (larger print area than the Mini). Both grand prize categories also come with a MatterControl Touch T10 - 10.6" Standalone 3D Printer Controller – basically a tablet you can use to run a printer without needing a full computer. The challenge runs from March 20, 2017 through May 8, 2017 and the full details are here.

WHO fact sheet on Assistive Technology

Coherent Market Insights produced the Elderly and Disabled Assistive Devices - Evolving from Luxury to Necessity report; a summary is available here.

Brain waves give movement to robotic exoskeleton

European researchers are testing a mind-controlled robotic exoskeleton that could enable fully paralysed people to walk again.

The €2.75m Mindwalker project uses an easily fitted electrode cap placed on the patient’s head to read brain signals related to movement that can be turned into commands for operating the exoskeleton.
The robotic suit itself, which is attached to the patient’s legs, is designed to mimic more closely the way people walk than other exeskeletons that require an additional walking frame or sticks to support the user.

‘Mindwalker was proposed as a very ambitious project intended to investigate promising approaches to exploit brain signals for the purpose of controlling advanced orthosis, and to design and implement a prototype system demonstrating the potential of related technologies,’ said project coordinator Michel Ilzkovitz of the Space Applications Services in Belgium.

He added that the technology developed for Mindwalker could also have applications in stroke victim rehabilitation and in assisting astronauts rebuild muscle mass after prolonged periods in space.
Once tests with able-bodied trial users are complete, the system will undergo clinical evaluation with five to 10 volunteers suffering from spinal cord injuries, which will help identify any problems and improve performance.

The researchers have developed a brain-neural-computer interface (BNCI) that converts electroencephalography (EEG) signals from the brain, or electromyography (EMG) signals from shoulder muscles, into electronic commands to control the exoskeleton.

To collect the signals, they used technology developed by Berlin-based eemagine Medical Imaging Solutions that consists of a cap covered in electrodes that amplifies and optimises signals before sending them to the neural network.

This contrasts with most other BNCI systems that either require electrodes to be placed directly into brain tissue, or take a long time to fit and use special gels to reduce the electrical resistance at the interface between the skin and the electrodes.

‘The “dry” EEG cap can be placed by the subject on their head by themselves in less than a minute, just like a swimming cap,’ said Ilzkovitz.

The BNCI signals also have to be filtered and processed before they can be used to control the exoskeleton. To achieve this, the Mindwalker researchers fed the signals into a ‘Dynamic recurrent neural network’, a processing technique capable of learning and exploiting the dynamic character of the BNCI signals.

‘This is appealing for kinematic control and allows a much more natural and fluid way of controlling an exoskeleton,’ said Ilzkovitz.

The exoskeleton itself can support a 100kg adult and is powerful enough to recover balance from instability created by the user’s torso movements during walking or a gentle push from the back or side.
It is relatively light, weighing less than 30kg without batteries, and uses springs fitted inside the joints that are capable of absorbing and recovering some of the energy otherwise dissipated during walking, in order to make it more energy efficient.
Unlike most exoskeletons that are designed to be balanced when stationary ­– a property that makes them heavy, slow and require additional support when moving ­– the Mindwalker uses a controlled loss of balance.
‘This approach is called “Limit-cycle walking” and has been implemented using model predictive control to predict the behaviour of the user and exoskeleton and for controlling the exoskeleton during the walk,’ said Ilzkovitz.

Space Applications Services also developed a virtual-reality training platform to allow new users to safely become accustomed to using the system before testing it out in a clinical setting.
Mindwalker was coordinated by Space Applications Services NV and received research funding under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).


Read more: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/medical-and-healthcare/news/brain-waves-give-movement-to-robotic-exoskeleton/1015711.article#ixzz2NHFLK1FD