The Red Dot Luminary is the highest prized awarded by Red Dot in the Design Concept category. This year’s winner is a company named BionicM, who created an innovative motorized prosthetic knee that is the perfect sum of design and biomedical engineering. Thanks to the motor-powered mechanism substituting the knee joint, it can help above-knee amputees restore physical functions in a better way that traditional prosthetics and with reduced physical pain.

BionicM’s CEO, Sun Xiaojun, is a prosthesis user himself. His idea for a Robotic Prosthetic Knee, he explains, came from the need to fix the common problems current state-of-the-art prosthetics users are facing. On of this problems, according to the founder, was the look and feel of prosthetics.

“I think that design is very important in a high tech product like the robotic prosthetic knee joint because people focus on appearance”, Sun Xiaojun said in an interview with Red Dot. “Especially in the prosthesis field, the traditional product looks very poor in appearance. So, we focus on design to create high function, a beautiful and cooler product”.