That’s not the case for Genta Kondo, the co-founder and CEO of Tokyo-based Exiii. When Kondo entered Tokyo University’s Yokoi Lab, a testing ground for rehabilitation-focused robotics, he wasn’t setting out on some idealistic mission to make the world a better place. Back in 2008, he was solely attracted to the science behind the lab’s prosthetic hands and power-assisted mobility devices.

“I was a basketball player and loved sports since I was a kid,” he tells Tech in Asia. “I had an interest in motor control — not motor as in engine, but the motor neuron, which is how the brain controls the body. In the beginning, I wasn’t thinking about the social aspect or helping people, just the science.”

Kondo would go on to spend a year at Berkeley, eventually earning a master’s degree from Tokyo University’s school of engineering. By the end of his tenure as a hardware researcher, he was unconvinced that robotic prosthetics would be accepted by the mainstream and adopted by amputees and those born with missing or partial limbs.

After graduating in 2011, he entered ubiquitous Japanese tech giant Sony to see if there was any true potential for bringing such devices to the mass market. Konda was sent to Sony’s now-defunct research and development division in Gotenyama — an area in Tokyo once nicknamed “Sony Town.” The firm officially exited the consumer robotics business in 2006, but Kondo was hired as a robotics researcher.

Though he admits to working on a robot — and having colleagues who had formerly worked on the AIBO robot dog and QRIO bipedal robot — Kondo says that he’s still bound by a confidentiality agreement with Sony that prohibits him from discussing exactly what he did in Gotenyama.

Sony would have been a dream job for many, especially given the unusual amount of freedom that Kondo was afforded as someone who was essentially working undercover. While he enjoyed many aspects of the job, including an opportunity to work with an internal startup called the Mesh Project, Kondo’s heart remained with the prosthetics that he’d tinkered with back in school.

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High costs

It wasn’t until 2014 that the entrepreneurial bug swooped in and bit Kondo. Along with two friends from Panasonic, the trio sought to produce a bionic arm that disabled people would actually want to use.

Kondo’s apathy vanished when he realized how under-utilized modern technology was in the current prosthetics market.

“According to clinicians I spoke with, about half of [arm and hand] amputees don’t use anything — they can still walk and do 90% of their daily activities,” Kondo says. “Within the other half, studies indicate that more than 90% are just using cosmetic, not functional, prosthetics.”

High cost is a major issue in the prosthetics industry, even for purely cosmetic items. The price rises exponentially when bringing sophisticated hardware into the mix, up to and exceeding JPY 1.5 million (US$12,100), according to Kondo. He realized that the burgeoning 3D printer movement was the answer. Not only could someone print parts at home for a fraction of the cost, but repairs and upgrades would also be easier and cheaper.

“3D printers have really accelerated the process of hardware development,” Kondo says. “When I was in the prototyping lab at Sony using 3D printers to make robotics components, I had a feeling they would change the hardware industry — and the world.”

Kondo and his team saw an opportunity to not only disrupt the prosthetics space, but to give actual movement, gestures, and handshakes back to those who’ve suffered a personal tragedy or birth defect. Their startup, Exiii, was born.

Form

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Making its robotic prosthetic both functional and affordable was just one piece of the puzzle for Exiii. It also needed an appealing design. Kondo explains:

“People who’ve lost a hand or an arm generally want to hide it, that’s why most prosthetics are made to look like skin. Our designs are different because we want people to show their disability in as positive a light as possible. Our designer wanted to integrate the warm feeling of a natural hand with a robotic look. If he had designed something completely robot-inspired, it would be too sci-fi for most people. He really took time to come up with smooth lines and curves that maintain a human aesthetic, without looking like Frankenstein.”

The group moved fast, entering the first prototype in the James Dyson Award later that year. Out of 650 entries from across the globe, Exiii was awarded second place. Suddenly, what began as a side project (each of the three members had maintained their day jobs) was attracting international attention. DMM, a Japanese internet company that offers everything from on-demand porn to English lessons — and which also happens to run a state-of-the-art coworking space for hardware startups in Tokyo — invited Exiii to join its inaugural class in November 2014. Soon, the media were paying attention to the young startup.

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After being featured on a nationally-syndicated television program, Exiii found its first evangelist — or, rather, the evangelist found them. Akira Morikawa, who lost his arm in an accident in 2013, contacted the team via Facebook wanting to give it a try. The team decided that SXSW in Austin, Texas, would be as good a venue as any to show their hard work to the world.

“It’s not strictly a medical device, but more of a wearable item,” Kondo says. “The Apple Watch is a wearable, but our prosthetic arm is the ultimate wearable.”

Function

There are currently five generations of Exiii robotic prosthetics, but it was the fourth version — dubbed “Coyote” — that stole the show at this year’s SXSW. Attendees queued up for a chance to shake hands with Morikawa, following him around the exhibition floor with curious eyes whenever he strayed from the startup’s booth.

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Coyote uses six motors — one at the base of each finger and thumb and another to rotate the thumb — and uses an Arduino Fio V3 board. Juice comes from a non-rechargeable lithium battery, which gives the arm two to three hours of continuous use. The whole package weighs about 750 grams.

“SXSW was our first-year anniversary event, and the first time to test our prototype with real users,” Kondo says. “Morikawa’s response was really great, he told us it was exactly what he was waiting for. Up until then, people were skeptical. We talked to doctors, clinicians, and therapists — conservative types [when it comes to new tech] — and they thought the design wouldn’t satisfy the users on an emotional level.”

The startup’s fifth and latest version, “HACKberry,” is lighter and more compact than Coyote. It’s roughly the size of an actual human hand, and thus more appealing to female users who may have felt that previous versions were too imposing. HACKberry uses an Arduino Micro, has only three motors, and features a passive wrist joint — important when a user wants to hold a drink without spilling it. Apart from reducing weight to 650 grams, fewer motors also mean vastly improved battery life of up to 12 hours, with this iteration using a popular rechargeable and easily replaceable digital camera power pack.

HACKberry can be printed with a sub-US$1,000 consumer 3D printer, like MakerBot. The entire prosthesis can be assembled at home using roughly US$300 worth of parts.

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Both models connect the prosthetic to the user via a photo-reflective sensor that attaches to the residual muscle at the end of their arm. It converts muscle contractions to finger and thumb movements, which can be configured for different situations via Exiii’s companion smartphone app. Activating the index finger only, for example, allows a user to point. Activating all four fingers and the thumb is used for handshakes or holding objects.

“Coyote can grab a full bottle of water, which weighs about 500 grams,” Kondo says. “HACKberry uses even stronger motors, and is capable of pinching tiny objects like zippers or shoelaces firmly.”

Hardware that helps people

Several other high-profile robotic arm startups were born around the same time as Exiii. California-based Not Impossible Labs made headlines for “Project Daniel” in March 2014. After reading about a Sudanese boy who lost both his arms in an explosion, Not Impossible CEO Mick Ebeling illegally traveled to Sudan to build him a robotic prosthetic and teach his village how to 3D print similar prosthetics for others.

There’s also Easton LaChappelle, the American teenager who built a brain-powered bionic arm for US$250 back in 2013. LaChappelle’s motivation came from a young girl he met at a science fair with a US$80,000 prosthesis. Because she still had many years of growing to do, the spinal-implant controlled prosthesis would have cost her family a small fortune to replace with increasingly larger sizes.

E-Nable, founded in 2013, provides free 3D-printed mechanical hands to children around the world. In the UK, Open Bionics has been providing low-cost robotic hands as an alternative to traditional prosthetics since 2014.

“None of us knew each other at first, but we all kind of appeared in late 2013 and early 2014,” Kondo says. “I think there was just a sudden trend for hardware that actually helps people.”

On June 7, Exiii embodied that sentiment when a Japanese singer (Kondo asked that her name be kept confidential for privacy reasons) took the stage with her very own HACKberry. The singer, who was born with a partial arm, used the prosthetic to wave and point at the audience — something she had been unable to do while holding the microphone in her other hand.

Open source

After a domestic crowdfunding campaign netted Exiii JPY 3.5 million (US$28,300) in late 2014, Japanese hardware incubator Abba Lab provided the startup with an undisclosed amount of seed funding this January. The startup also added an 2015 IF Design Gold Award to its mantle shortly thereafter.

DMM.make, in partnership with Abba Lab, continues to provide Exiii with office space and a US$4.5 million prototyping facility filled with 3D printers, and testing devices.

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Realizing that monetizing such a niche product would be difficult, Exiii embraced the “service model” favored by the startup’s peers in the prosthetics space and released HACKberry’s build data on Github last month.

“The effect of going open-source has been larger than we expected,” Kondo says. “We have seen makers from around the world posting pictures of HACKberry prosthetics printed and assembled by themselves.”

In collaboration with non-profit Mission ARM Japan, the startup received JPY 25 million (US$203,000) in prize money after winning the Google Impact Challenge in March. That initiative will further the availability of Exiii’s prosthetics for those in need.

“Our goal is to increase bionic arm penetration in Japan from 1% to 20% within three years,” Kondo says of the partnership with Mission ARM Japan, noting that less than 1% of Japanese people who could benefit from a functional prosthetic are actually using one. “It’s a shame that that number is so low, and many [within that figure] are still using tech from half a century ago. We want to spread awareness that [advanced robotic prosthetics] exist in the first place.”

Instead of charging forward with another funding round, the startup is more interested in seeing what the world will do with an open-source HACKberry.

“I want to invite makers from around the world to improve upon [it],” Kondo explains. “After SXSW, I received hundreds of emails asking to make it open source. With a small team, we couldn’t possibly cover all the feature requests that people had made, so going open source makes a lot of sense.”

HACKberry will be entering into clinical trials in Japan to see how it holds up during daily use and how it can be tweaked for patients with different conditions. Ever the scientist, Kondo hopes to eventually publish an “Exiii thesis” for the medical and scientific community.

He may not have set out to change the world, but Kondo’s prosthetics have as good a chance as any to do just that.