OUT ON A LIMB explores the evolution of prosthetics and the exciting advancements now occurring at the intersection of neuroscience, engineering, and robotics. The narrative unfolds through interviews with scientists, prosthetists, innovators and inventors, as well as the individuals whom this technology will ultimately benefit.

From Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics lab to universities across the country and the Amputee Coalition’s camp for kids, this documentary explores an intriguing science that is changing what it means to lose a limb. What was once futuristic is occurring now. 

Advances in prosthetics always coincide with wars. But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have spurred unprecedented focus and funding, just as emerging technologies and developments in neuroscience are providing opportunities that never existed before. Body armor is saving lives that would have been lost in prior wars, but ironically a larger percentage of those survivors are upper limb amputees. The federally funded response is DARPA’s “Revolutionizing Prosthetics” -- a project committed to the design of an entirely new type of prosthetic arm. At the same time, breakthroughs in neuro-engineering, such as Targeted Muscle Reinnervation, are allowing amputees to control early prototypes of those robotic arms with their thoughts alone.

Soldiers who have lost limbs understandably receive the most media attention and the most advanced prosthetics, but they are only a fraction of the 2 million amputees in the US alone. In fact amputees are invisibly all around us. Every day 500 Americans lose a limb to diabetes, peripheral artery disease, cancer, and accidents. Many millions more around the world lose limbs to landmines, disease, wars and earthquakes. 

So who will this transformative science actually reach? And who is still fighting for access to prosthetics that have been available for years? In America, it’s often easier to replace a failing organ than to replace a failing prosthesis.

Sometimes advances in the field come from amputees themselves. One of them is Van Phillips. Years ago he threw away his own first prosthetic foot as well as the conventional dogma of the day that a prosthetic foot should look like a foot.  Studying how animals run and the dynamics of motion, he invented the Flex-Foot, a simple shape made of carbon graphite that revolutionized prosthetic foot design.  Recently his “Cheetah foot” caused a controversy when the Olympics Committee claimed it would give double amputee Oscar Pistorius an unfair advantage over normal limbed runners. 

Van recalls that when he was a boy, he thought all amputees must be homeless men because they were the only ones he ever saw-- with their rolled up pants and peg legs.  Now many amputees have come out of hiding, in large part due to the new technology. A generation that grew up on play stations and computers operates the bionic I-Limb hand easily and wears the computerized C-leg and Power Knee proudly and is ready for what’s coming next. OUT ON A LIMB reveals just what that is-- what’s on the horizon and what’s beyond… as revolutionary prosthetics move from the lab to the bodies of amputees.