Location: Humotech at the Irongate Technology Center off Route 28 Featured guests: Josh Caputo, founder CEO; Carl Curran, principal design engineer; Troy Bradbury, production engineering manager; Tony Stader, friend of Humotech and member of the limb loss community; and Keith Prorok, se curity services supervisor for Irongate Technology Center 3 things that surprised me: 1. Humotech‘s offices are located inside the Irongate Technology Center, a massive campus that was originally built as Gulf Oil’s research laboratories in 1933. At one point, the site employed thousands of people and was considered one of the leading industrial research centers in the world. In 1985, the property and land were donated to the University of Pittsburgh and became known as U-PARC: the University of Pittsburgh Applied Research Center. In 2024, the university sold the property to private owners. It became the Irongate Technology Center. 2. When Josh was a student at Carnegie Mellon University, he was initially interested in building a new kind of robotic foot. He eventually learned that the larger issue with prosthetics could be identifying the right prosthetic for each user. Along with his team at Humotech, Josh has developed a device that simulates dozens of different prosthetic feet options so that folks who use prosthetics can choose the perfect one. 3. Humotech developed the Caplex system, which they use for simulating different prosthetic legs or arms in addition to exoskeletons. Josh showed me a set of exoskeletons that can fit around a person’s foot and ankle so that folks who have suffered strokes or trauma to their limbs can test out a variety of exoskeleton models while wearing one unit. One thing that didn’t make the final cut: Josh mentioned that there are massive steam tunnels in the basements underneath their offices that date back to the Gulf Oil days. He says he’s been down there, but we didn’t get a chance to check them out. Want more Yinzer Backstage Pass? Check out our visit to the historic Boggs Mansion where a restaurant in the carriage house has sat untouched for nearly two decades. The post Inside the massive 1930s research campus where Humotech is building the future of prosthetics appeared first on NEXTpittsburgh. ...read more read less