From Star Wars to the lab: the Zaragoza-based company that makes affordable, lightweight robotic hands

When someone sees Star Wars for the first time , they marvel at the advanced special effects for its time, the Jedi lightsabers, or even the different species that appear. However, for Domingo Sampedro, none of these aspects aroused his curiosity as much as the robotic hand fitted to Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith. Its structure and function kept going around in his mind, and that thought stayed with him for years until he ended up founding Lirio Bionics . The Zaragoza-based company manufactures robotic hand prostheses for amputees , although they are not yet on the market.

His obsession with the character’s robotic hand led the Jaén native to wonder, during his high school years, why hands as advanced as those in the film didn’t exist. “I saw that they weren’t like Anakin’s and thought: how can it be that in 2014 there isn’t something like that with the technology available?” That curiosity led him to study Mechatronics Engineering at La Almunia de Doña Godina, where he developed his first prototypes and presented a final degree project with twenty innovations compared to what was on the market.

He explains that this was achieved because large companies aren’t investing in real progress because the products aren’t as profitable, since “there aren’t as many people with amputations as there are with mobile phones, so it doesn’t pay to innovate.” In many cases, he adds, the prostheses sold today have barely changed in the last ten years and are often made without considering improving the ” quality of life ” of users.

PROSTHESIS RENTAL

One of Lirio Bionics’ greatest innovations, which sets it apart from the competition, is its business model based on the rental of these parts. “I don’t sell prosthetics. I realized that if I had to sell them, I would have to sell them for between 75,000 and 80,000 euros ,” says Sampedro, who knows that these prices are beyond the reach of almost anyone.

The solution he found was to offer them as a service, through a subscription. Users can rent them for a monthly fee that can cost around 350 euros. This way, the prosthesis becomes the property of the company, and if it breaks, Lirio Bionics replaces it with another at no additional cost.

This allows people to access state-of-the-art prostheses without going into debt. “ Less than 10% of people who need prostheses are able to access them . Either because of technology or because they can’t afford them. We take that pressure off. What we want is to increase their purchasing power, relatively speaking,” he says.

Another aspect that sets them apart, explains the founder, is that they design the product based on the needs expressed by people with amputated hands, which the industry hasn’t addressed. They discovered that weight was a critical barrier, as weight causes significant fatigue and requires several physical therapy sessions per month. Thus, the Lirio Bionics models are between 40% and 78% lighter. Ultimately, the Zaragoza startup’s goal is to make users’ lives easier by focusing on their needs.

SCALE TO OTHER SECTORS

The technology developed by Lirio Bionics doesn’t only have medical applications. “It’s focused on bionic prosthetics, but it can be scaled up to other sectors,” says Sampedro, who specifies that it could have other functions, such as systems applicable to defense or industry. “Our system can be applied to robots that remotely deactivate bombs. And in industry, all humanoid robots… 50% of the cost of those robots goes into the hands. And you can put our hands on a robot, and you can also put them on people,” he explains.

They also want to develop a specific robot for people with double amputations so they can fit their prostheses themselves without the need for assistance from others.

A LONG-TERM VISION

For Sampedro, the startup’s future goes beyond hands. “The idea is that when we’re generating revenue, we’ll begin with neuroscience research . Just as we make robotic hands, we can use the technology for brain implants and apply it to exoskeletons,” the young man says.

They’re also thinking about bionic eyes. “We don’t know for sure how to cure blindness  but we know where to start our research. The same goes for brain implants. We don’t know which wire to pull, but we know where to start our research,” he says.

MORE INVESTMENT

Lirio Bionics operates in a particularly complex field: healthcare technology. A sector with high technical, regulatory, and financial demands, where innovation is costly and slow. “We’re at TRL 4 and we need to reach TRL 7 to be able to market. But moving from one to the other is very costly, and not just in terms of effort,” explains Domingo Sampedro regarding the technological maturity scale. To do this, they need licenses, certifications, and testing that can exceed €300,000, and all of this before earning a single euro. “You can’t ask me to have a minimum viable product, which I already have. You can’t ask me to validate technologies that are already validated. And you can’t ask me to earn revenue when certification costs hundreds of thousands of euros ,” he exclaims.

The problem, he says, is that the rules of the game are designed for other sectors, such as the digital sector. “That works when you have an app. But in healthcare, there are so many barriers. I can’t think of a sector where there are more barriers than healthcare,” he asserts. That’s why the conditions demanded by many investors become a circular trap. “ Everyone tells you they like the project —banks, venture capitalists, investors… but then they tell you that once it’s certified, they’ll get involved,” he emphasizes. To this, Sampedro always responds that he needs the money to certify the project.

The team is looking for alternatives such as public subsidies, although they don’t have an easy time of it either. “They ask you to spend the money first, and after nine or ten months, we approve it, we give it to you. I don’t have a million euros,” he laments. At Lirio Bionics, they ask that the funds be adapted to the reality of sectors like theirs, where the risk is high, but the potential for impact and profitability is also high. “We need to open our minds a little and take on a broader risk profile than the one I’m seeing, because not all sectors are the same,” he says.