Virtual Reality Prosthetics

Last week’s exhibition in the Winter Gardens attracted 4384 visitors – here are a couple of great ideas that came  from the Design It! activity:

The first design is by Trinity Cavanagh, aged 5, which is soft and light and features voice recognition and helps you reach up high and also do high fives.

The second is Barnaby Cavanagh’s Batman hand (aged 3). This hand has got rubber bits on the fingers to help hold things, a Batman cape to help you fly and a button to provide grass for horses. It also turns into a boat and keeps you dry in the rain.

Take a look at our Build an arm exhibit:

Over the past few weeks, the project has featured at two pop-up exhibitions at the Millennium Gallery and Weston Park Museum, reaching almost 3500 visitors.

The feedback from the public has been fantastic. Through our ‘evaluation wall’ which captured the visitor demographic and people’s experiences, we discovered that the public found our exhibition to be of genuine interest. Comments ranged from ‘How great it is for kids, no matter what age’ through to ‘Learning you could control prosthetics with the brain, and the use of VR to help’ and ‘How hard it is to live with one arm’.

Next year the exhibition will reach out to even wider audiences when we tie in with national sporting events such as the World ParaAthletics Championships in London in July and the Special Olympics in Sheffield in August. An accessible online resource is also being developed to ensure project sustainability, so that schools and young people, and the general public can extend their learning about cutting-edge research and related study and careers.

Kevin Evison who supports the project as a very active steering group member and role model competed in last month’s Cybathlon competition in Zurich, Switzerland. The competition, pitched as the ‘Bionic Olympics’, enables people with severe disabilities to compete in an array of events with the help of assistive technologies. Kevin said: “Disability sport is very much in the public eye thanks to the success of the London Paralympics, but people don’t see the struggles people with disabilities or physical weakness face every day.” Read more about the event here

Project team member, Kevin

Look around an interactive, 360° virtual tour of our Sheffield Millennium Gallery Exhibiton:

We’ve had an amazing three days showcasing our project to the public at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield with 1701 visitors from far and wide! Team member Steve made a short 360 video of the event so you can see what we’ve been up to. Just click and drag (or swipe) to look around:

After last week’s two-day dry run at UTC Sheffield with over 100 visitors, we’re now feeling ready to take our project out to the world…well, to the people of Sheffield to start with at least! Team member, Steve Florence, adapted this photo of me trialling our Virtual Reality experience, and I can confirm that it is awesome. We’ll have lots of practical activities on offer including a specially designed ‘Anatomy Scanner’, and you will be able to build your own hand and design a prosthetic or artificial arm with our help. There will be plenty to look at and loads to do, and the team will be on hand (see what I did there?) throughout the day to help you. Please come and help us get our message out and join the debate about blending in or standing out.

The antique prosthetics and full skeleton have arrived, our film is coming along nicely, our exhibition designers are working on the final look as I type, so we are almost ready. Looking forward to letting YOU see what we’ve been doing very soon. Join us at the Millennium Gallery from 25-27 October for the first glimpse of our cutting-edge research. More details here!

Judith & Denise with the antique prosthetics

We are now four months into the project and are making good progress. Our Core Team meets monthly to fine tune our project plan and ensure we are on track, and our very active steering group has already had its first meeting, with a second meeting planned for July.

We have already delivered three events with very different audiences. The first was for a family audience and was held during British Science Week involving hands-on experiences for people of all ages; the second event was held at UTC Sheffield in April and this enabled us to trial some of our activities and resources with secondary and primary school pupils. Our most recent event was a public debate which enabled us to explore some of the more challenging and contentious issues associated with limb loss in a public arena.

You can see details of these events in our other posts.

We are currently planning more schools events over the Summer.

Dates for the exhibitions in Sheffield Museums have been confirmed as 25-27 October and 12-13 November 2016, and planning for the exhibitions is underway.

The VR system and Leap Motion tracking are continually being updated to ensure they are appropriate to enhance understanding and learning.

The website and additional online resources (including teacher and STEM ambassador resources) are in development, with plans to have a simple website up and running from the end of May, and further development completed in time for the first exhibition in October.

Our twitter account is continuing to raise awareness of our project and attract new followers. Please follow us if you don’t already!

@vrprosthetics