Boy invents an electronically-aided knee brace

A family friend of Syamantak suffers from polio, making him lack leg function. To enable this friend to stand up, doctors proscribed a leg brace to ensure he wouldn’t collapse when standing up. Syamantak noticed that the brace simply locked and unlocked, only enabling limited mobility. After failing to find a better alternative by going online, Syamantak decided to make his own, by taking a standard brace and adding a motor and mini computer, saying he was using an upgraded leg brace to ‘turn him into a robot’.

This type of knee brace, a knee-ankle-foot device that assists in walking by bending the knee, is the first of it’s kind. On top of his device making daily tasks more accessible, according to Syamantak, “It’s safer. It's less of a strain on the body and it also takes less energy”.

Syamantak won second prize at the Intel Science fair for his knee brace, and is currently waiting for a patent and is hoping to put it on the market soon, but for his family friend, the brace is already starting to make a difference.

When tests were ran using the prototype, he said "It almost feels like I'm walking and I hadn't before."

Symantak is passionate about sharing the benefits of combining his expertise with experience, and using this to do good, saying, "The root cause or inspiration is trying to help other people and trying to help make the earth a better place for mankind.”

Adapted from: http://bit.ly/2tagtcv
https://youtu.be/vnbDdh0Wms8