The laboratory of the power to act

At Humanlab, everything is there to give life to new solutions: 3D printers, laser cutters and electronic assembly benches. Here, each newcomer is the leader of a project, and supported by the association's volunteers who support him in his research and in the use of the machine tools available. Through dialogue and experimentation, customized solutions for each disability are developed. Ultimately, the objective is to spread this model throughout the world, to create an international mutual aid and prototyping network.

The origin of the association can be found in the personal history of Nicolas Huchet, its founder. Back in 2002. At the age of 18, while employed as a mechanic in the metallurgical industry, Nicolas Huchet was the victim of a serious accident causing the amputation of one of his forearms. At that time, prostheses existed, and they were even reimbursed by social security. But the devices in question only propose a pincer movement. “The idea of going from being a penguin to that of a crab did not appeal to me,” Nicolas quips ironically.

He is learning about the existence of more sophisticated prostheses, which allow a greater diversity of movements. After a few years, Nicolas Huchet noticed the appearance of new, highly advanced prosthesis models. Unfortunately, each of them costs several tens of thousands of euros, and are therefore completely unaffordable for ordinary people. “When I realized that health depended on our financial resources, I was deeply angry.”

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Like almost all people with disabilities, Nicolas Huchet lived for ten years wearing the prosthesis model reimbursed by social security. Dissatisfied with this situation, he began to look for a solution, an alternative that would improve his situation. One afternoon in October 2012, Nicolas Huchet finally pushed open the door of the Fablab in Rennes. A place open to the public in which several machine tools are made available to inventors in the region, so that their ideas can come to life. That day, Nicolas Huchet met a member of the FabLab who was working on a 3D printer. “Seeing all these machines, I thought I was in a science fiction movie. I went over and asked if it was possible to print a bionic hand.”

This question is intriguing the local maker community, these inventors touch everything that populates fablabs. A few months later, in February 2013, a small community of volunteers was formed around the project. Engineers, professors, students, or job seekers start working on this hand. A first prototype is born. It is based on the plans of the InMoove robot, a so-called open source project whose plans are distributed free of charge to anyone who wants to use, study, modify or distribute them. “On this 3D printed bionic hand base, we placed fishing lines, connected to electric motors, which are themselves connected to electric motors, which are themselves connected to muscle sensors: as a result, we had our first bionic hand, homemade, for a few hundred euros.”

This bionic hand is being talked about well beyond the Rennes fablab. Very quickly, Nicolas Huchet was invited to present his project in several events around the world. Over the course of several meetings, he realizes that if a prototype hand has been created, other prostheses could be created in the same way. Faced with this enthusiasm, Nicolas Huchet wanted to go further. In 2014, he co-created the My Human Kit association, to work for What he calls a handicapped, that is to say to “the transformation of disability into an asset”.

To extend handicapping to as many beneficiaries as possible, the association opened Humanlab in 2017. It is a fablab, inspired by the one that Nicolas Huchet discovered in 2012, but which focuses on the issue of disability. “The aim of the association is to collectively manufacture objects, technical aids to disability, for and with the people concerned, for and with the people concerned, in a workshop designed for this, in a workshop designed for that, which did not exist before.” he affirms. This purely technical mission serves a more distant, more general objective: “to change the perception of disability, about ourselves, and more generally in society”.

Since its creation, My Human Kit has evolved a lot and is now developing new solutions: a smartphone application for voice control for the blind, a customized 3D leg prosthesis called Print My Leg, and even a wheelchair equipped with an electric scooter. True to its “Fablab” DNA and the open source philosophy that accompanies it, My Human Kit publishes all its work online, so that each project can be reproduced, improved and distributed.