World's first woman to use bionic arm with AI technology
Sarah de Lagarde has become the world’s first woman to use a bionic arm with AI technology.
De Lagarde, a 44-year-old mother of two, lost her arm and leg in a tube accident last September. After slipping on a rain-soaked platform at High Barnet, she fell underneath a train carriage and was caught under second train before her cries for help were heard.
As de Lagarde lay on the track, she tried to unlock her phone to call for help, and explained, “because of my broken nose the facial recognition software wouldn’t acknowledge my face. Eventually someone noticed me and the paramedics came.”
Only days before the accident she had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with her husband, Jeremy.
She said:
The de Lagarde family found that whilst provision of prosthetics through the NHS was good, beginning the process of procuring an arm could take two years.
The family decided to instead raise money to afford the £300,000 it would cost to go private.
The bionic hand was created by Covvi, a company in Leeds, while the other parts for the prosthetic have been developed abroad.
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