ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A letter expressing "deepest gratitude" from a Russian landmine victim fitted with a newly developed artificial foot demonstrates one reason for the initiation of a second prosthetics project between the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories and the Ohio Willow Wood Company. This one, to develop an advanced artificial knee, is supported by a $1.4 million cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) from the DOE's Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention Program. The agreement was signed on July 28.
In a unique arrangement, technologies for foot and knee prostheses are being jointly developed by two nuclear weapons laboratories on opposite sides during the Cold War, Sandia and the Russian laboratory known as Chelyabinsk-70, in Snezhinsk, about 900 miles southeast of Moscow.
Ohio Willow Wood, located in Mount Sterling, near Columbus, will define the requirements for parts and perform final laboratory and clinical testing. The Russians will design a titanium housing, and Sandia robotics researchers Mark Vaughn and Dave Kozlowski will design the knee's internal workings and electronics. Sandia and the Russian nuclear lab will split their half of the funding.
"This work will have many benefits," says Sandia chemist and project leader Mort Lieberman, who will also manage the Russian connection. "Someone in this world loses a limb to a landmine explosion every 20 minutes. Our work, though only remedial, will help landmine survivors and other amputees."
The work also provides employment on areas of civilian need for Russian nuclear scientists who might otherwise be tempted to sell their expertise to countries the United States would prefer not have it. In an odd twist, "We will have created the world's biggest research center for lower-limb prosthesis in a Russian laboratory," says Lieberman.
The first collaboration, on an artificial foot, has reached the stage where the devices have been experimentally affixed to willing amputees. The improvement in motion over currently marketed prosthetic feet is such that "I am amazed by your invention," writes Russian amputee Sergei Burlakov to Mark Pitkin, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine who invented the initial version of the foot being further developed by the weapons labs and Ohio Willow Wood.
Burlakov reportedly now can walk the entire day on the improved model without experiencing discomfort that formerly made him unable to wear a prosthesis for more than two or three hours. "At the institute where I have undergone my rehabilitation process, your Rolling Foot made a sensation," he wrote to Pitkin. And, in the unintentionally saddest of his sentences, "All of my friends and acquaintances there dream of having prostheses like these."
The current project will draw upon Sandia's electronic expertise and Russian materials knowledge to create, respectively, the brains and shape of the knee. "The work is a good fit with the capabilities of both labs," says Lieberman. "It involves stress analysis, mechanical testing, reliability testing, microprocessor control, and materials analysis."
It also helps out the prosthetics industry, which is dominated by small companies with relatively small technical support. While prosthetic companies certainly have worked to improve their devices, says Lieberman, they lack the resources to perform the type of testing possible at both nuclear laboratories. A knee must be able to vary the speed of its response. Then it needs to lock so that its wearer doesn't fall when standing. "The knee is not simply a hinge," says Lieberman. "If it were only that, it might swing back too far or not enough, letting the foot hit the ground too soon and causing its wearer to trip."
Other proposals related to prosthetics have been submitted by Sandia and Chelyabinsk-70 researchers to various funding organizations, says Lieberman. The proposals deal with the creation of sockets able to adjust to the swelling and shrinkage of an amputee's stump during the course of the day, knees that help prevent falling when a wearer stumbles, and microprocessor-controlled prosthetics to obtain a more natural gait.
Lieberman serves on the Executive Board for the International Institute for the Prosthetic Rehabilitation of Landmine Survivors, is on the executive board of New Mexico Dept. of Health's Disability Health Advisory Council, and has been nominated to serve on US Dept. of Education's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.
Lieberman also represents Sandia in a consortium established by the Amputee Coalition of America in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control on the subject of limb-loss research and prevention of secondary conditions. He credits the push that took place in technology transfer in the early 1990s for opening the door to applying weapons technology to other applications. Sandia is a multiprogram DOE laboratory, operated by a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corp. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major research and development responsibilities in national security, energy, and environmental technologies.