For the inventive mind, aging may help
What makes an inventor? And does that creative spark change or diminish with age?
Dean Kamen invented the first drug infusion pump as a college undergraduate, then an all-terrain, self-balancing wheelchair that goes up and down stairs and can rise to eye level of a standing person. But he is best known for a more recent invention, the Segway.
All these advances, he says, were intended to make life better for people with health problems. Last spring the Food and Drug Administration approved use of a manually dexterous prosthetic arm called "Luke" (after the "Star Wars" hero who lost a hand) that Kamen and his company DEKA developed with support from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Kamen, 63, has been given awards from MIT, the White House and the National Inventors Hall of Fame, among many others, for his creativity. He has also co-hosted a TV series,"Dean of Invention," that looked at new technologies and inventions around the world. Kamen says he is still thinking big, but he no longer pulls all-nighters when working on a problem, and his memory isn't quite what it was.
Sometimes, he says, "I can remember there is a solution; I just can't remember what it was."
Does he have an invention for that? "I try to ignore the fact that I'm getting old and it's liable to get worse.
He recently spoke about his work and his brain.
Q: How did you think up your inventions?
A: It takes a different mind-set to decide we are going to solve the same problem everybody else has been looking at, but we want to take a fundamentally different approach.
In the case of the Segway, that really resulted from - I kid you not - a great idea in the shower. It's not quite Archimedes running through Athens naked yelling, "Eureka!" I had been working for years on trying to figure out how to give the disabled population more access, more freedom, more dignity, keeping them at eye level with everybody.
But if you are going to put somebody's head in the air at six feet, that base has to get really long, large and heavy or they'd fall over. And if you want to climb a curb or set of stairs at a 45-degree angle, you need something that looks like a bulldozer and weighs a thousand pounds. None of that made any sense.
Humans walk around all kinds of places. Try as we could to make a stable machine to deal with those environmental issues, we kept failing. The machines were too complicated. They were heavy. They had too big of a base.
I was frustrated. I thought, "We've made machines to put people on the moon. I've made helicopters that can do pirouettes off my roof. We've made all sorts of machines that can exceed the speed of sound. We've put machines underwater. For a guy that can't walk around anymore, we can't get him up a curb, we can't put his eyeballs high enough (so that) he can see."
Q: You were really frustrated.
Then one day I take my morning shower. And I open the shower door and there's water outside the shower. A nice polished surface. As I step out, my heel hits the floor as it usually does. But instead of creating friction, it starts sliding out on a very slick puddle. I put my arms behind me as kids do as they learn to balance.
That's because of momentum: Putting your arms back rotates your body forward and you won't fall on your butt or your head. There I go sliding through the puddle, swinging my arms, about to go down and slam into the wall on the other side. I could swing my arms and the momentum can hold me up.
I stood there and said, "Problem solved."
We can get around so well because we're not static, unstable machines with a big, heavy base at the bottom, like a Coke machine. A Coke machine doesn't fall over because it has a 4-foot-by-4-foot base at the bottom. But a human being, who is as tall as a Coke machine, stands on little toes. If you got drunk or if you're not thinking and balancing, looking around without moving, you do fall over. You are dynamically stabilized, not statically stable.
"Dynamically stabilized" requires this ability to move front and back. I tried to build a machine that duplicates what a person does walking around: Let's put two points on the ground separated about shoulder width. Let those two points move forward and back. If you are about to tip forward, move those wheels back. A set of sensors that do what your inner ear and brain and muscles do.
Literally, I stood there dripping wet, getting cold, thinking, "Hey, we are solving the wrong problem. We're not a big, clumsy, statically stable bulldozer. Let's build a balancing system and put a person on top of it."
It was a totally new way to look at a very old problem.
Q: Do you look to nature for inspiration?
A: Nature is a pretty good source. Engineers are very proud of the things they do. We're very proud now we can make tiny flying machines, drones. Then you watch a mosquito go by and its ability to do things - fly inverted, land on anything, suck a little blood out of you, get away before you can stop it. It powers itself. It has vision.
We build dialysis machines we're very proud of vs. the 400-pound machines you have to drive to.
We made a machine that has done a quarter of a billion therapies. It looks tiny compared to that centralized machine, but compared to the kidney - a kidney we carry around with us all day. You don't need to plug it in at night. You don't need to do anything to it. Who would want one of my prosthetic arms vs. their own equipment?
Nature is a good place to start. We do the best we can to emulate it.
We do some things nature can't do. A mosquito can't (fly beyond) Earth's atmosphere. It isn't going to put a guy on the moon.
Q: How does aging change you as an inventor?
A: You never really notice yourself aging, just everybody else, especially people you don't see very often. I can't tell you how my process for developing new ideas or churning ideas has changed. I am sure it has changed. It's probably gotten better, based on experience and judgment.
On the other hand, I'd like to say at DEKA, how we go about doing things hasn't really changed much. I think we like to look at a problem and instead of looking at how the rest of world has solved it and trying to make it a little better, little simpler, little cheaper, a little lighter, we like to look at that problem and say, "Knowing what we now know about what technologies are around, could we take a radically different approach to what's being done now?"
We've always done that, and I don't think that has changed.
Q: Have you noticed any difference in your own mental capabilities?
A: For sure, it's less. I used to be able to work days at a time without even thinking about sleeping. Now I get through the day and I'm roaring to go. I'll get some food. Afterward, I am happy to eat a little bit and I'm happy to go to sleep. I never used to do that. I would generally go to sleep when I was just too exhausted to work, if it was the middle of the night or the next morning or the next day.
Now, I frequently know I know something, but I can't recall it, whether it's a person's name or how we did something. It is particularly frustrating to me, to know this is something we already solved. I should be able to pull it out of my memory bank. I can remember there is a solution; I just can't remember what it was.
Q: What do you do about it?
A: I try to ignore the fact that I'm getting old and it's liable to get worse.
Q: Does it make you think about what you might invent next - something to help the aging population?
A: Lots of people are going down that path, and they have the skill sets. There are all sorts of people starting to understand specific issues I know nothing about. I'm rooting for them.
Q: Could you imagine a time when you'd have to use the Segway to get around?
A: I frequently imagine myself using every product I have ever worked on, but it's to make sure what we're doing is the right thing. I just ask myself a simple question: Would I use this?
Frankly, I've been very lucky. I have never needed dialysis. If I do, I would use my machine. I've never had a stroke or a car accident. If that happened to me, I would absolutely want a Segway before a wheelchair. I've never been a diabetic, although my grandparents were both diabetic. My brother is. I've never needed to use an insulin pump.
I'd rather run around with my legs than use a Segway, but when something starts to fail, it's nice to know something is there.
Q: What do you know now as an inventor that you wish you had known as a young inventor?
A: What I didn't realize when I started out is how many people will try to convince you not to be an inventor. They all know it is frustrating. They all know things are going to fail. They care about you. They want to see you succeed. But the constant direct and indirect subtle messages when you are trying to do something that you are going to fail at weigh on you.
I wish I knew back then that's the way other people feel, but it has nothing to do with how you (as the inventor) feel. I will fail, but I'd rather fail trying to do something really big. …. I'm less likely to be concerned than I was. Each time I failed, I should have been less concerned what others thought.
Q: What message do you give young inventors?
A: That problem-solving and being creative and inventive when the answer isn't in the back of the book is exciting, even though it means you are more likely to fail than when you go methodically along, checking the answers in the back of the book. You can solve problems when there is no answer. There is no right answer. There are a lot of alternatives, each with its own exciting outcome.
If you can get kids comfortable dealing with the unknown and trying to solve problems when there's no solution and then they get the bug, that's exciting. I think we will create a generation of inventors. They'll have confidence and passion and will be willing to try things that fail.
Q: What is next for you?
A: "Next" in the long future is the same as everybody else, and I don't like to think about that. "Next" in the short term is to continue to do what we've been doing. I have 600 engineers here, so I can take on projects I never dreamed of. Water for the developing world. Electricity for the developing world. Making those accessible to everybody.