In our Q&A series, The Lightbulb, we ask innovators and entrepreneurs to tell us about how they turned their ideas into reality. This week we talk to Mathew Jury, founder of award-winning company Taska Prosthetics which makes state-of-the-art prosthetic hands.

First of all, give us your elevator pitch for Taska Prosthetics.

The Taska product is a water-resistant prosthetic hand that’s designed to be durable. You can wash the dishes with it, walk in the rain with it, and grab certain items with it knowing that it won’t break (the Taska hand is designed to last five years). 

What were you doing prior to Taska?

Taska started selling products in November 2017, but development started in my garage back in 2010 so it’s taken a long time to get to market. During that time I was working as an engineer for Kordia (I’ve got electronics, firmware and communications training).

How did the idea for Taska come to you? What was your lightbulb moment?

I had an accident and broke both my arms and my elbow and wrist. I was fortunate not to lose a limb, but the limitations opened my eyes to those who have. That certainly added to my empathy for amputees.

Before the accident, I was looking to change careers to become a prosthetic fitter. But the experience catapulted me into actually inventing a prosthetic hand. I started making hands in the garage [while still working full time], and in the beginning, I had a lot of trouble with hands breaking. When I spoke to international specialists at the time, they said the most expensive product on the market had exactly the same problem. So if you could crack that nut, then you had a product. So that was what gave me the focus to take it from just tinkering to something more.

This industry [that makes these prosthetic hands] is about 12 years old and up until our arrival, extreme fragility was a major problem. The products on the market had really struggled with just basic levels of robustness so that became the main focus of the design.

Not only can [the Taska hand] be submerged into water without any sort of glove, but it’s also got patent-pending designs around three concepts that are integrated with the hand to ensure that it can survive general wear and tear. One of the biggest ones is a shock absorber. It’s basically a silicon block that houses the fingers and absorbs energy whenever it gets knocked. 

After deciding to invent your own prosthetic hand, how did you go about bringing that idea to life?

To develop a product like this cost several million dollars and you can’t do it all by yourself. I’m an engineer, but there was a need for a commercial person as well as funding assistance. The company didn’t really start to get serious traction until our first patent application, which was endorsed by professionals over in the US. When people saw that, they realised this could be real and investments started to flow. Later on, a number of specialists helped to get [Taska] across the line.

After about year five, it was no longer just me and my garage anymore. There were a lot of people involved making sure we were getting something together that was real and was going to be a good product.

What can the Taska hand do?

The Taska hand is a multi-articulating hand which means there are motors for each finger. And because it’s got a number of motors that can be individually controlled, there are patterns that the hand knows. There are over 20 patterns in the hand, like the pincer grip that allows you to pick up something like an egg, or a power grip for grabbing a handlebar on a bike. You’ve also got a lateral grip which allows you to shake someone’s hand, hold a pen or hold a cellphone. It’s also a very relaxed grip so it’s one of the more common ones.

How is the hand controlled?

This is where things start to get hard. With Taska, users basically have access to two options to change grip patterns: buttons on the back of the hand, and ‘sensor triggers’.

With sensors, there are two on the arm [that] measure the voltage of the muscle activity when the user flexes their remaining muscles. So one sensor generally measures ‘open’ and the other measures ‘close; when the user flexes their muscles as best they can to replicate opening and closing their hand.

Users can also do morse code signals. They can take a moment, stop, and do a series of twitches. They could be consecutive pulses or holding one of the ‘open’ or ‘close’ positions. There’s actually five of these ‘triggers’ available to these users. That’s how you’d traditionally change grip patterns on a device like a multi-articulating hand, by doing these morse code signals. But it’s slow and unnatural. It’s ‘digital’ and human brains don’t really work very ‘digitally’.

So that’s why we have the more ‘old-fashioned’, practical buttons on the back of the hand. It means users can access a number of grips quickly that they wouldn’t normally be bothered with. So that’s a plus for us.

What’s been your biggest challenge since coming up with the idea for Taska in 2010?

There was quite a long period where it wasn’t clear whether the product would get across the line because a) it was expensive to develop a product like this, and b) there were so many technical challenges to make a hand that was robust.

It probably wasn’t until about mid-2016 that it was clear we were going to make it.

Where does the Taska hand get made?

While software development is done in Wellington, all the mechanical design and assembly work is done in Christchurch which is where we’re based. The product has over 500 parts to it so we can’t make everything in New Zealand, but all the assembly gets done here.

How many customers do you have so far? And is Taska profitable?

There are over 200 users of our product in the USA today. We also sell product into Australia and New Zealand but those are quite small compared to the US. We also just started shipping to Germany to a distributor there in the last month.

At this stage, Taska is profitable.

Finally, what can we expect for the rest of 2019?

We hope to crack 500 hands by the end of the year. We’ve also just released our medium hand, whereas before we only had the large hand. The medium hand allows us to cross over into female amputees and we’ll continue to work and expand our product set over the next 18 months.

The US banned Huawei and now Google is breaking up with the Chinese smartphone maker. How did all go so wrong?

I’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few days. What happened?

Earlier this week, Google announced plans to restrict access to its apps and services on Huawei products. That means no more Gmail, no more Chrome, no more YouTube, and no more Google Play. Yikes.

Oh shit, I own a Huawei phone! How will this affect me?

If you’re a current Huawei user, rest assured there are no immediate effects and that everything should be fine. But don’t just take my word for it, this is what Huawei NZ’s deputy chief executive Andrew Bowater had to say:

“Anybody who has a Huawei phone currently in the market, there’s no need to panic or rush back to retailers yet. There is no need to do anything like that because we’ve said we’ll continue to support the phones and Google have said the same.

“If you’re an existing Huawei customer there’s no change at this stage. It’s more about future devices.”

There’s still one lingering uncertainty for existing phones though, and that’s to do with security. As Consumer NZ points out, Huawei may no longer have access to Google’s software fixes before any known issues are released to the public. That means Huawei phones could be vulnerable to attacks for days until those updates are added.

How annoying. Why has Google suddenly decided to do this?

The move comes after the Trump administration in the US ‘blacklisted’ Huawei, meaning it’s restricted from doing business with any US company without explicit government approval. Trump insists the ban is based on concerns over possible Chinese spying after US intelligence branded the company a security risk. Huawei vehemently rejects this claim, countering that the ban is a ploy to punish China as trade negotiations intensify. 

Yes, all this is happening amid the escalating trade war between the two major powers. For more than a year, the US and China have been going tit-for-tat with tariffs on everything from laptops to soybeans. The Huawei ban is effectively the boiling point of this long-running trade war which intensified last year after the arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou on charges of financial fraud.

 Is Huawei a big deal in New Zealand?

In the last few years, the Chinese company has been accelerating its push into western markets such as the US, UK and of course, New Zealand. Just last month, it celebrated the launch of its new P30 smartphone and smartwatch by throwing a free musical festival on Auckland’s Federal Street. It’s also been teaming up with a number of influencers, magazines and news outlets to drum up as much publicity as possible.

Huawei has also been oft mentioned in New Zealand’s 5G debate. The government has yet to make a final decision on whether to will allow Huawei components to be part of the country’s new cellular network.

As a current Huawei user, what should I do now? How are other users responding to this move?

Obviously, it’s up to you whether you want to trade-in or stay put. In Singapore and the Philippines, it’s been reported that some customers have been rushing to sell off their Huawei phones. Locally, however, things seem to be a lot calmer: a Trade Me spokesperson says there’s been no change to the number of Huawei listings week-on-week since the news broke on Tuesday.

“I’ve got everything I need downloaded [and] Huawei have their own app store anyway,” says local Huawei user Robert Webb. “I have a Gmail account but used a third party mail app so it makes no difference.”

“Can’t see it as a problem. Hopefully, my phone will last longer than Trump does.”

That’s not to say interest from buyers hasn’t dropped. According to PriceSpy, Huawei’s popularity has dropped by almost 23% compared to the same time last week (Monday to Wednesday). Meanwhile, interest in Apple and Samsung increased (the latter – Huawei’s Android rival – rose by more than 24%).

What about retailers in New Zealand? How are they responding to this?

For most retailers it’s business-as-usual. In a statement, electronics retailer PB Tech emphasised that as of yet, nothing has changed and customers should be assured that “all Huawei smartphones sold by PB Tech, their software updates, and Google Services are currently functioning as expected.” It also added that should this change later on it would be “happy to honour its obligations under the Consumer Guarantees Act” and refund customers for Huawei purchases.

What next for Huawei? Is it doomed?

It definitely isn’t doomed: bear in mind that a large chunk of Huawei’s customers are in China where Google is banned anyway. With millions of customers likely to be unaffected by Google’s decision (and the fact that Chinese support for Huawei has grown amid an escalating trade war), Huawei will, at least in the short term, be just fine.

Plus, Huawei chief executive Ren Zhengfei told media that it’s been preparing for this eventuality for months, reportedly stocking up on chips (the US ban also affects the hardware side of its business) and developing its own operating system and app store. Of course, Ren could be bullshitting to save face, but contingency plans for businesses aren’t exactly out of the norm.

So things should be fine for Huawei in its home country, but outside of China? It’s a whole other story. While Huawei won’t completely lose access to Android (its core operating software is open source, after all), it’s hard to imagine Huawei being able to compete with rivals like Samsung when it won’t be able to offer key Google services like Maps, Drive and Chrome. It could just be the end of Huawei overseas – all that marketing will have been for nothing!

Of course, there’s the slim chance that all this gets called off if the ban, for whatever reason, ends up getting lifted. Huawei will surely be hoping for this, but keep in mind that so will Google. After all, breaking ties with the world’s second-biggest smartphone supplier hardly works in Google’s interests either.

But maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it’s time for both Huawei and Google to forcibly to take a step back. After all, aren’t we trying to whittle down big tech?