Simbex Press Release

Lebanon, NH - August 25, 2006 - Simbex LLC, a world-renowned research and development company in the field of active life improvement, today announced that it had secured a Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) award to lead the development of new robotic foot/ankle for people that have experienced lower limb loss. The U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command (MRMC) Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) seeks a foot and ankle prosthesis for improved maneuverability and reduced metabolic effort. Furthermore, this cost-effective design is targeted towards improving walking speed, gait metabolism, and prosthesis control compared to current passive foot-ankle technologies.

Simbex and its founder, Richard M. Greenwald, PhD., have a history of innovation in the field of prosthetics. The development of the platform technology known as the Smart Variable Geometry Socket (SVGS) gave transfemoral amputees a more stable prosthesis fit by managing the volume of the limb-prosthesis interface. In 2002, Simbex launched a commercial product based on the SVGS technology called the Active Contact System™.

Simbex leads a team of internationally recognized scientists and engineers. Most notably, MIT Media Lab's Hugh Herr, PhD, will lead the technical development of the control algorithms and mechanical actuators. Dr. Herr's is a leader in the fields of biomechatronics, biological motion control and the advancement of human rehabilitation and augmentation. Dr. Herr, himself a bi-lateral below-knee amputee, developed the world's first microprocessor swing and stance knee system to utilize the power of artificial intelligence.

The project team has begun work on a prosthetic foot and ankle system that promises to allow amputees to walk further with greater ease on various terrains and walking conditions and which looks more natural at rest - even allowing the user to raise to their tip-toes again! The team expects to have working, first-generation models in trials by the second quarter of 2007.

About Simbex LLC
Simbex is a research and product development company whose core expertise is biomechanical feedback systems. The company develops marketable products and solutions from emerging technologies for active life improvement in the areas of prosthetics, sports injury prevention and rehabilitation. The founders are internationally recognized experts in their fields and have decades of experience in the area of functional evaluation and efficacy assessment of complex biomechanical systems for the sporting goods, orthopedic and exercise equipment industries. The research branch of the Company is supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Department of Defense. For further information about Simbex, visit the company's Web site at http://www.simbex.com.

About MIT Media Lab

The outline of the Media Laboratory was formed in 1980 by Professor Nicholas Negroponte and former MIT president, Jerome Wiesner, growing out of the work of MIT's Architectural Machine Group, and building on the seminal work of faculty members in a range of other disciplines, from cognition and learning to electronic music to holography.

Today's lab continues to push the envelope with a range of research that no single industrial partner would be able to duplicate. Current research foci include machines with common sense, viral communications, "smart" prostheses, advanced sensor networks, innovative interface design, and sociable robots. Projects range from a program that can convert drawings to musical compositions, to wearable sensors fro monitoring health, to electronic ink. Lab researchers are dedicated to creating a future where machines not only relate to people on more "human" terms - a future where our devices not only respond to commands, but also understand them.

Faculty and graduates have started more than 60 companies since the Lab began. For further information about MIT Media Lab, visit http://www.media.mit.edu/about/index.html.