Jordan Reeves, a 10-year-old girl from Columbia, Missouri, created this prosthetic arm that shoots glitter as part of KIDmob and Autodesk’s “Superhero Cyborgs” program. Autodesk is a 3D software firm that provides engineers and experts to help the kids decide what they’d like to make, as well as the 3D-printing means to make it happen.
The arm cannon, which Reeves calls “Project Unicorn,” has to be carefully pre-loaded with glitter ahead of use, as she demonstrates in the video above. Once it’s full, the cannon fires glitter on all cylinders:
The cannon is still a work in progress. Jordan Reeves plans to improve the device; she told Fast Company that for the moment, the glitter particles “just kinda spill out,” but that could change. Sam Hobish, a designer from Autodesk, has been working with Reeves to iterate the design:
I’ve been talking to my colleagues in electronics and materials development about ways we can create some kind of pressurized system that shoots out sparkles more effectively … I plan to work until we get something she really likes. If that means we make new prototypes over the course of a year, I’m fine with that. I’ll keep going until someone tells me to stop.
Jordan Reeves has some other ideas in mind for a final prosthetic— perhaps one that “could hold heavy things like our groceries. It might actually have a hand on it. It started out as one thing and then it grew into something cooler, and I’m designing it to make it better.”
It shoots glitter, so it’s already pretty amazing—but it’ll be cool to see what else Jordan Reeves comes up with for the design.
(via PopSci)
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