Troops' new bionic leg now for civilians, too

A new bionic leg is now giving civilian amputees a chance to do standard tasks more easily than ever.

CBS News Correspondent Elaine Quijano reported the Genium, originally designed for wounded soldiers, costs about $95,000. Its battery runs five times longer than other micro-processor models. And one more thing: It's waterproof!

On "The Early Show," Quijano told the story of Joe Tucker. An amputee since 25, Tucker lost his left leg in a motorcycle accident. But wearing a prosthetic limb hasn't kept Tucker down. He's been through six legs and counting!

Tucker showed CBS News one of his older legs, saying the original technology is a "little bit heavier."

With the older models, climbing stairs and stepping over objects was challenging for Tucker, and practicing baseball drills with his kids was difficult.

Tucker explained, "There are frustrating times where you want to teach them how to throw a ball, differently like pitching, or you want to teach them how to hit a ball, batting. I stand differently than they do."

His newest leg - the Genium, developed in part by the military for wounded soldiers - promises to take him to new heights. Tucker is one of the first civilians to step out with the Genium limb.

Retired Army Sgt. Bill Dunham, a fellow amputee and Genium user, has been coaching Tucker on using his new leg.

Dunham said, "(I'm) going upstairs, step over step, showing Joe how to do that. It's firing those muscles that I hadn't used before and showing Joe how to maybe perform that. And he's doing great already."

Created by German firm Otto Bock in collaboration with the U.S. military, the bionic leg is powered by a complex sensory system and allows more range of motion and reacts faster to an amputee's every move.

John Rheinstein,  of Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics, told CBS News, "Because it has so many sensors in it and it knows where it is in the environment, it's able to make decisions about how it should react for the patient, so they can do all kinds of things they could never do before."

It uses blue-tooth technology that allows amputees to switch between different activity settings like biking or golfing, giving Tucker more freedom to take new steps into a world of possibilities that he can share with his kids.

Tucker said, "For the first time, last week I was able to help my 4-year-old actually bat properly, standing evenly with him, from behind him, and I was never able to do that before."