iWalk

A new week, a lot to learn, a lot to generate and a lot to explore.

Afternoon IBM person spoke at our technology stretagy class, since I have dealt with Mainframe and conversion of legacy apps from Mainframe to client-server, IBM has been quite a firm/icon to study. I do not know how to obsorb the information he present, choose to put into more consideration.

Tonight speaker is a great person, Hugh Herr, asso. prof. here, founding iWalk. His stories or should say, his founding journey is surprising, amazing and fabulous! In 82, he was caught at an accident, which ended to amputated his both feet and part of lower legs, every since, he challenges the robotics design to get a better feet. When he came in, no-one could tell that he is wearing a pair of artificial legs, which he walks normal, no difference leaning the wall! He said that when you have 10+ pair of shoes, he has10+ pair of legs in the closet. He is such sports person, rock climbing is his passion.

He predicted that by the end of this century, that no-one will consider the list of disabilities as 'disable' as technology could help. He used an example of people's nearsighted, which was considered 'disabled' before having glasses. nowadays, no-one even think nearsighted is a disability. When he talked about this, it really reminded me of my senior year in high school, after I failed the eye exam during physical exam, it completely ended my dream to be an ER surgeon, as by then, you will not be allowed to wear glassed in the surgery room, in another word, if you are nearsighted, you are not qualified for that position. It still bothers me whenever I think about this.

I sat at the first row, closely facing Hugh when he shared his stories, what a person, not give up his dreams, not ended up with pity himself but challenge to seek the better technology to help all the amputees. a side of story he shared about his education, he nearly failed his high school as he just wants to do rock/mountain climbing, even went for 4-5 years, then take couple years of math, got in MIT in ME, went to Harvard for Ph.D. in Physics, got tenure in both Harvard and MIT. Who could judge a below average high school student that he does not have a good future? He even increased his artificial legs one inch per week during graduate school, until someone does notice that he keeps growing.

His founding journey was not easy, buy approaching Nike with his designed shoes, Nike did not take it. In stead of depending on another big com, he creates product on his own, wisely using grants and consistently apply grants funding on his work;
-- major lessons: using grants, get good team members(he used headhunters to find his team members.)
--approach his design with both series and parallel elasticity on the artificial legs, focusing on how to help people, even people have legs, but had hip surgery
-- his products help a lot of soldiers injured in Afghanistan
--the powerfoot, could potentially replace mountain bike

When I left the class, I watched him get on sagway left. Looking forward to seeing his next invention.