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'Robo-legs' help amputees get around

Hope Harrison, a professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University in Washington, had a leg amputated in 1979. Hope, 43, said she had used a range of prosthetics, but preferred the C-Leg now. She also prefers to wear it with a natural-looking cover.

"It's one thing to see a man with a Terminator leg," Harrison said, referring to the cybernetic character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the blockbuster movie series. "It may inspire people to say, 'Cool'. But body image for women in this country is model-thin and long sexy legs."

Recharging the batteries
But young men, especially those who have been using personal electronics since childhood, are comfortable recharging their limbs' batteries in public and plugging their prosthetics into their computers to adjust the software, Hanson said.

"I love my Terminator legs," said Nick Springer, 20, a student at Eckerd College in Florida, who lost his arms and legs to meningococcal meningitis, a rare and often deadly bacterial disease he caught at summer camp when he was 14.

Like Cameron Clapp, Springer uses the battery-powered C-Leg system. Springer, who is broad-shouldered and athletic, said he had never been shy about his legs, which rely on sensors to monitor how the leg is being placed on terrain and microprocessors in the knees to control how the limbs' hydraulic system creates a natural step.

With hard work, Springer said, his legs, which can cost more than $40,000 each, helped give him back his mobility. He wore a kilt to his high school prom, and even donned Dr. Martens boots on his artificial legs to attend rock concerts with friends.

He recently went to the cinema with his father, Gary, an entertainment publicist in New York, to see Star Wars: Episode III.

"The entire time I'm watching the thing, I'm thinking 'cool, but bull'," Nick Springer said, referring to the scene in which the character Anakin Skywalker, who lost his arms and legs in light-sabre battles, is rebuilt with fully functional prosthetics to become the infamous Darth Vader.

"We have a long way to go before we get anything like that," he said. "But look how far humanity has come in the past decade. Who knows? The hardest part is getting the ball rolling.

"We pretty much got it rolling," Nick Springer continued, referring to the steady technological improvements as well as people's growing acceptance of his legs. He recalled attending a party where the lithium-ion batteries for his legs went dead.

"I usually get 30 hours out of them before I have to charge them again," he said. "But I didn't charge them up the day before."

When his legs ran out of power, he said he spent most of his time sitting on a couch talking to people with his legs plugged into an electrical outlet nearby. "It was fine," he said, adding that no one seemed to care.

Michael Chorost, a science writer and consultant, said that the public has grown accustomed to seeing people carrying around personal technology. "It started with the Walkman in the 1980s," he said.

Chorost, who is 40 and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, suffered his own disability by losing his hearing four years ago. Soon after, he had a device known as a cochlear implant placed surgically under the skin behind his ear to restore his hearing. The device requires him to wear a microphone on the side of his head.

In a book he wrote, Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, Chorost recounts how he went to an electronics store to buy a cable to plug his compact disc player into his implant's sound processor. When he explained to the sales clerk that he had a 'bionic ear' and showed how he planned to jack the music directly into his head, the clerk nodded and turned back to the cables on the wall. Chorost wrote, "Maybe he has customers walking into the store all the time asking how to plug things into themselves."

Cameron Clapp is a contract patient advocate for the Hanger Orthopedic Group, a company in Maryland that provides prosthetic services and makes sockets that attach to artificial legs. This month, Clapp was at a Hanger clinic in Oklahoma City to have new leg sockets built and to compete with other amputees in the Endeavor Games, an annual sporting event for athletes with disabilities.

Clapp is described as an agile runner and swimmer. It helps that he has three sets of legs: one for walking, one for running and one for swimming. He said he knew that practically everywhere he went, he drew attention. "I might not look too beautiful," he said. "But I give it my hardest."

He talked about how digital technologies swept recorded music from vinyl records to downloadable MP3 files and how similar technological leaps are sure to improve prosthetics in his lifetime.

"It's going to create new stuff," Clapp said brightly.