Joy Adalia
A 31-year-old welder in a small village in Bali, Indonesia was able to create a bionic arm for himself after suffering from a stroke—but is the bionic arm for real?
I Wayan Sumardana woke up one morning to discover that he could not move his left arm. While this could have been a sign of a stroke, his wife claimed that it had a mystical origin because before her husband lost the feeling in his arm, she saw that the arm was gone for a while but reappeared a few minutes later; something their son also witnessed, she claimed.
The family further claimed that the doctors could not find anything wrong with the arm; thus, they were advised to go to the shamans but he still wasn’t healed after numerous visits. Sumardana was forced to quit his job as a welder.
Without a job, he could no longer feed his family. One day, when his hungry son asked for food and he could not give him any, the paralyzed welder decided to do something about his plight.
He took some scraps of metal, a lithium ion battery, dynamo cables, various wheels, and other electronic components to create a bionic arm which he could wear over his left arm. Then, to control the arm, he made a headband which supposedly receives signals from his brain and makes the arm move the way he wants it to.
Because of the contraption, Sumardana was able to resume his job as a welder and gain newfound fame in the village. Soon, he was called the “Iron Man” or “Cyborg” by the local press. Thousands of people visited his village to see him in action.
While many people were amazed by this real-life Iron Man, scientists and engineers weren’t as impressed. In fact, a lot of them are debunking his claims especially because his contraptions appear to have several missing key components that would link the mechanical arm with the supposed signal receiver headband that converts his brain signals.
Sumardana lets everyone try his invention but no one can make the arm move the same way he does. No one can see the four square lights that supposedly go on when they use the signal receiver headband.
Despite the experts debunking the bionic arm’s authenticity, locals haven’t been deterred from worshiping Sumardana as their hero. “I don’t care if it is a robot or not! For me he is extraordinary. Not many people who suffer can fight and survive,” said die-hard fan Sang Putu Wardhana.
