Help Design Customised Bionic Arms At This Workshop In Mumbai

Maker’s Asylum, Mumbai is all about harnessing the diverse knowledge of India and channeling it into visible, effective social change. To further this goal, the S.T.E.A.M school was devised to encourage people to use their tech and design skills to solve ‘global sustainability challenges with local perspective.’ S.T.E.A.M is an acronym for Science, Technology, Electronics, Art and Math, and people from all skill backgrounds can apply, it’s been started in conjunction with Bonjour India, a French company whose goal is to ‘incubate dreams, ideas and projects moving the partnership between both countries into the future.’ After a successful second round in 2017, they’re gearing up for the next programme in the series, the Fabrikarium in partnership with My Human Kit in France. Held under the umbrella of Bonjour India 2017 - 2018 we will have about 65 participants (including differently abled people) and 20 mentors from India and France.

According to Ishaan Rastogi of Maker’s Asylum there are countless reasons why this initiative is well overdue and how they want to help “The problem is the severe lack of cost effective solutions to disabilities, and the solution that we came up with is to equip such professionals with the right tools because the ideas and solutions are already in their heads. All they need is a bit of a push and some guidance. Which is exactly what our mentors will be there to do!” The Fabrikarium is calling out to all of Mumbai’s artists, designers, engineers and specialists to come together and pool their knowledge. Instead of accepting the The initiative will be held between February 10 - 14, 2018 at Maker’s Asylum, Mumbai, India. The 5-day program will be focused on creating customized Bionic hands, low cost wheel chairs and brail printers with differently-abled people.

We caught up with the minds behind the Fabrikarium to learn a little more about what to expect.

If you want to join the project, register here.

Homegrown: What was the greatest motivation to bring the Fabrikarium to India?

Maker’s Asylum: India has a huge population, majority of which is underprivileged. Many Indians don’t have access to or can’t afford bare basic medicine, let alone expensive instruments that can help overcome physical disabilities. Additionally, we are living in an age where India is excelling in the fields of technological innovation thanks to her burgeoning population of driven professionals in the fields of engineering, technology, and design. And there you have it: a problem, and its solution.

HG: Can you walk me through the challenges of creating bionic limbs?

MA: Well to be honest, everything from the right fit to the cost. Most high-tech prostheses in the past have cost the earth and the affordable ones have needed constant adjustment to ensure a comfortable fit. However 3D printing and easy access to information has seen a sudden boom in more cost effective solutions and they’re only bound to get better and cheaper!

HG: Do you believe that it’s a viable option for the majority of India’s differently-abled citizens? MA: Hopefully it will be in the future! But for that to to happen, we first need to embrace the latest manufacturing technologies at a mass scale and grassroot level. Rapid prototyping equipment is still hard to come by and prohibitively expensive to purchase. Furthermore not everyone knows about the effectiveness of interdisciplinary education. This trend is changing and hopefully we will be seeing a lot more innovation coming out of makerspaces like ourselves.

HG: How do you feel the Fabrikarium empowers the differently-abled?

MA: Our group of 65 will include 15 differently abled participants who will be pivotal to the viability of the projects. Not only will the projects be designed based on their suggestions, but they’ll also be getting trained on some of the most important fabrication tools of the future, a skill not too many can boast of!

HG: Who is the Fabrikarium open to, do you need any basic skills to be able to attend?

MA: Fabrikarium is ideal for engineers, designers, artists, doctors, documentation specialists, and anyone else who has some experience or knowledge related to one of the aforementioned fields.

HG: Overall, what changes do you hope to see evolving from your partnership with My Human Kit?

MA: STEAM School, in partnership with CRI paris, was a huge success and during that program we targeted 5 UN SDGs. Fabrikarium sees us focus on physical disabilities and link up with My Human Kit. We do see a trend developing as we are keen on making a difference, not just with our alternate form of education, but with the ideas and projects that result from such programs. We hope all our partnerships continue to evolve with time!