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Powered Exoskeleton Legs
dyoo78 writes "Berkeley Engineers have come up with an ingenious mechanism that almost mimics, well, Borg technology. Developed by UC Berkeley's Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory, the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (BLEEX) consists of mechanical metal leg braces that are connected rigidly to the user at the feet, and, in order to prevent abrasion, more compliantly elsewhere. The device includes a power unit and a backpack-like frame used to carry a large load. This development bring to the forefront the ability to not only carry large loads in wartime efforts, but may possibly help people with limited muscle ability to walk optimally."
Steven Hawking has been using this technology for years!
Doing the splits is hard enough, but doing them sideways, in the middle of a somersault would be worse...
or:
The infantry advances with incredible speed towards the enemy, the men running across the battlefield at 50 miles/hour, then suddenly start to hop in circles as a small but significant grin occupies the face of the enemy commander...
[yeah, I know they're not netowrked, yet...]
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Alright, cool... But can it play Max 300 on hard in DDR? Yeah, I thought not.
i, for one, welcome our robotically enabled masters!
I wasn't sure story to read first, the borg technology or MS assimilating (giving money to) SCO. But they sounded similar, so I went ahead with latter one. :)
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Carrying heavy loads in wartime? You mean, like, say, that backpack full of batteries and equipment to power your cyberlegs?
Yes, Berkeley-ites! With our patented "Hippie Assist" functionality, you can flee the tyranny of pepper-spray-wielding police at up to three times the speed! And the titanium-alloy supports allow you to carry up to SIX times as many picket sign bearing snappy slogans!
Worry no more as you march around protesting the cause of the day, as you can taunt the pigs with impunity!
(Hemp-shoe compatibility guaranteed!)
Add on robotic arms, and we'll be ready to fight off alien queens and throw them out airlocks.
/sig
All your muscles are belong to us!
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Does it run Linux? If so, I'm afraid of it. I wouldn't want a malicious penguin taking over control.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
Woooowwwwwzzeerrrrrrsssssss!!!!!!
They're robo-trousers, ex-NASA!
I love the photo of the guy wearing it. Let's put Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis in that get-up and see if it looks familiar. Who you gonna call?
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
It's the wrong trousers!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
This is great -- it senses your motions and accomodates you, helping you along:
/. article a few months ago about a Japanese team of researchers who were working on the same sort of device (I don't recall the name, but I'm sure the dupe-hounds will point it out). But if I recall correctly, that system required control imput, such as from a joystick-like device. That limits the robusteness and usability pretty severely, IMHO.
The researchers point out that the human pilot does not need a joystick, button or special keyboard to "drive" the device. Rather, the machine is designed so that the pilot becomes an integral part of the exoskeleton, thus requiring no special training to use it. In the UC Berkeley experiments, the human pilot moved about a room wearing the 100-pound exoskeleton and a 70-pound backpack while feeling as if he were lugging a mere 5 pounds.
There was a
Interestingly, this thing runs on a gas engine (which powers hydraulics for the powered joints and provides electricity for the computer controls), and:
The current prototype allows a person to travel over flat terrain and slopes, but work on the exoskeleton is ongoing, with the focus turning to miniaturization of its components. The UC Berkeley engineers are also developing a quieter, more powerful engine, and a faster, more intelligent controller, that will enable the exoskeleton to carry loads up to 120 pounds within the next six months. In addition, the researchers are studying what it takes to enable pilots to run and jump with the exoskeleton legs.
I want my robot body now please. Price?
everything in moderation
Took nearly 2 minutes to download, but watching those short steps around... then finding out that the backpack was loaded with 100lbs.... wow.
Obviously the future of movement and an important first step, no pun intended.
So we've got a unit that can carry up to 120lbs of weight. Figure a few more lbs and it may now be able to 'support' a man whos legs no longer work properly. Although this design is based upon feedback from a proper leg to calculate where it is supposed to move/balance.
The old quote about the yellow pages- let your fingers do the walking- may soon become far more true than you've realized... especially for those born or brought to wheelchair bound.
I'm sure it wouldn't be too tricky to put physical or electrical limits on the exoskeleton to prevent it from moving into a position that the human body can't. I seriously doubt it'd be a big problem.
I'd be worried about the centre of gravity on this thing. From the picture, things don't look too good. Sure, the person can carry a huge load. But that load is all on his back, with some of it a foot or more away from his body. If he tips over will the legs be any help getting him upright?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
...to having technology seen only in science fiction stories happen right in front of our eyes.
This technology could easily make it possible for soldiers to carry very heavy armor that could possibly protect them from most all small arms fire and possibly even some heavy fire. All the while carrying heavy machine guns and small autoloading cannons that these days require crews to move and operate.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
"the wearer can walk, squat, bend and swing from side to side without noticeable reductions in agility."
But can he LIMBO!
The onion is rarely this prescient: http://www.theonion.com/onion3123/hawkingexo.html
on how long it will be before this kind of equipment becomes standard fare in moutain climbing? Everest may not be so hard anymore, with a mechanical exoskeleton and oxygen tanks, and the kind of people who climb everest (which generally costs over $100,000) have the kind of money to blow on this kind of technology when it becomes available.
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
This suit enhances strength and load-bearing capability. The jet-shoes enhanced speed alone. There was no back brace or luggage compartment - just big-ass loud shoes :)
Then again, there was the spring-loaded running suit those guys made. It retained almost as much energy running as a Kangaroo (one of the most efficient runners on the world). With it, people could run really fast and jump high, all without power. True, it was massive and you'd look a dick wearing it, but technologically fantastic.
"with braces on his legs before?"
certain gives new meaning to "Run, Forest, Run!"
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
WWF raw next weeks is gonna *rule*.
-ninjaneer
the first steps in producing the powered armor of RAH's "Starship Troopers".
I found it interesting to use the term "Pilot" for the user/wearer - especially in light that the exoskeleton is designed to be used with apparently little training.
It's nice to see that we are taking the first steps (excuse the pun) to fight back after space insects destroy Buenos Aires.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I can see it now. A poor cripple in school has this exoskeleton. Then the school bully hacks it to beat up the kid wearing it. Then the bully can be lazy, have virtually no evidence he did the beating and stillbe the bully.
Evolution or ID?
Hey Darl, that innocent 'kick me' sign is going to take on a whole new meaning. Say hi to the martian rover.
is to get this developed to the point where it could replace a wheelchair. The psychological advantage to a person who'd lost the use of his legs to actually stand up and interact with the world "eye to eye" would have to be powerful. It probably also doesn't hurt to keep the muscles moving and the appropriate neural pathways firing.
Yea, I know, long way to get there from here, but it's a promising first step. Certainly worth some research dollars in my opinion.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
They vids aren't that exciting. If you are looking for pr0^h^h^h Cool manga type mechs, but if you are interested in human-robitc compatability, this is nice.
:-) But as the downloads at berkley were getting slower and slower, I offer a mirror of the three vid clips:
Each video is basically a guy walking around in circles for a minute or so. So if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all.
Bleex-part1.mpeg(18)
Bleex-part2.mpeg(21 meg)
Bleex-part3.mpeg(23 meg)
[/karmawhoring]
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
The article neglected the real reason for designing it. The guy shown in the picture is an engineering student, and the backpack is full of electrical engineering textbooks. He's trying to make his life easier.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
The video clearly showed that the power pack this device currently
needs is so heavy that a guy wearing the skeleton+power pack looks
the way I do when I carry 30+ kilos and no exoskeleton! In other words,
he would be much better off if he left the exoskeleton+power back
behind, and carried on using natural power only.
As with a lot of other cool devices, the really big problem is the need
for compact, efficient, lightweight power sources.
They currently don't exist.
This one has arms.
...and it's smaller to boot:
Hybrid Assistive Leg
"The fundamental technology developed here can also be developed to help people with limited muscle ability to walk optimally"
Having just broken my ankle recently, I could see how - if priced right - this technology would be great for patients recovering from leg injuries.
I'm wondering how well it actually supports the legs. Assumedly, one could splint or cast the broken part of the leg/ankle/etc, and allow the mechanics to take weight off the broken areas.
Even if it weren't useful for an actual break, it would definately be great for the recovery process. I'm getting my cast off tomorrow, but I can see that my muscle atrophied rather quickly. 5 weeks, and my once well-formed muscles are now rather thin (the other leg got a lot stronger though).
An exoskeleton would assist the weak muscles, while the movement should force movement which would strengthen them over time. I'd go for one if I could get it!
This was invented by Robert A. Heinlein in the book Starship Troopers!
Looks like Mr. Heinlein has done it again. He predicted more then a half century ago that the interface for a an exoskelton (which is what the powered armour in ST is) would be through a force feedback system, shere the suit reads human movement and then reacts to it. Thus very little special training is required to use the powered suit, or exoskelton.
Robert A. Heinlein was also the guy that invented the water bed.
So, the engineers finally played this game and decided that it can't be that hard to actually build a machine like that.
:)
On a serious note, that's what this is on the way too. Someone above mentioned that this will enable soldiers to carry very heavy armour that can protect them from most small firearms. Soon, there will be arm exoskeletons and then after that we'll have complete exoskeletons, and at some point, the machines will end up looking like the Mechwarrior machines with missiles and automatic machine guns.
Though it would be nice to think of the possibilities on a humane side. Helping people who've lost the ability to walk, to walk again. But that not what provides the money (the large amounts needed to really propell this). This should make basketball actually watchable again
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
The article starts out with a statement of how terrible it would be to haul around a 70 lb pack. That was considered a light load when I was in the Special Forces. Double that capacity and you'll have something the Army might be really interested in.
Read any good sonnets lately?
That would be the engine and hydraulic pump I'd presume.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
I prefer the acme-rocket pack to the jet powered shoes personally, although springs on the soles of shoes can get that kangaroo motion down. Either way, that damn Fastus Birdus will always get away.
Short of it being used for a Burningman Project, I think it's life is over. (Sniff...)
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me
The side with that technology, thus cutting down considerably on the losses of your armed forces or the side that this technology would be used to defend against?
Personally, one would imagine that faced with the possibility of fighting such a foe that most governments would most likely reconsider any potentially hostile activity towards such an equipped government.
Of course, such is the march of human progress. One could argue forever that military forces and armed conflict do nothing but ill for all of humanity, yet at the same time someone else can point out the near endless series of side benefits that have been brought to humanity because of humanity's propensity towards killing eachother.
For instance, the computers that you and I are both sitting in front are the progeny of now 'ancient' military computer systems built during WWII. We may never have had RADAR systems developed if not for war. Same goes with rocket and jet engine technology...
Sure, war sucks. Sure, people die from armed conflict. However, without war, we would most assuredly not have the technology that we have today as artists, philosophers and pacifists aren't as prone to push forward the march of technology as much as those that have been put into desperate situations that need a radical new way of thinking to achieve a goal do.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Watch the video, and note the intense concentration on that guy's face! Walking around in those legs is obviously not easy. At some points it looks like he is losing his balance, or at least he feels like he's losing his balance, because he puts his arms out.
They obviously still have a lot of work to do...
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
Had an extensive article on full body exoskeletons VERY remeniscent of the kit ripley wore in aliens...
/. over 30 who hasn't suffered from terminal alzheimers....
The article included actual photographs of actual working (though tethered by hoses to a static power pack) units that were being developed by/for the US Army.
I cannot remember the axact issue or year because I was a mere sprog and my dad used to buy the occassional pop mechanics, but it was early sixties.
This was 45 years ago people....
Please don't tell me I'm the only fart on
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
I liked how the saftey cable was discreetly dangling down behind the demonstrator's head and connected to the backpack. Good insurance against demo gremlins that would cause the system to seize and make the guy flop forward with 200lbs of stuff landing on his back.
Not A Sig
Yes! You too will be able to run across America several times. You will recall that when our hero Forest Gump was a tiny lad, he had these very same braces. With the help of a training team he quickly learned to run very fast and long.
It's a shame that these things will probably be locked up and secured for "military use only" by the government. After all, we wouldn't want terrorists to get them (sarcasm).
[I for one, welcome our new mechanically legged overlords]
*chuckle*
Don't forget, strength doesn't negate inertia.
You can go splat insided an exoskeleton just as nicely as you can outside one.
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
I've only managed to download the first two videos so maybe it shows in the third, but I wonder if this thing can let the "pilot" stand still with the 100lb bag on his back. You can see the kid kinda throwing his hands out for balance once in a while. For some reason I imagine standing still and balancing the weight would be a lot harder for the machine to interpret and more difficult for the kid to balance than the walking.
Moderation: +1 pwnage
Of course, there's nothing like curing goons chasing you on bikes... by using your powered exoskeletal legs and arms to rip their ugly pink fleshsticks from their sockets.
"It's Payback Time!"
- The Terminator
If I get one of those things, I can honestly say to someone:
"Bite my shiny metal ass!"
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Excuse me while I shamelessly try to attach myself to work that I can take no credit for.
Professor Kazerooni was my Masters Advisor while at Berkeley in 96-97. His lab is filled with completed and partially completed robotic mechanisms. He and his students have been working on things like this for years. Just to give you an idea of the advancements, check out the arms and legs of his Electric Power Extender. These things are a lot closer to any Mech than the BLEEX. Then again, these things were attached to several Pentium era PCs and several LARGE wall mounted power racks. The reduction in size is remarkable. Imagine walking into the lab and seeing these big, shiny, robotic legs hanging in the middle of the room for the first time. It is a very cool "oooh" and "ahh" experience.
I'm a little disappointed that the project I and others worked on is not on his main page. Oh well.
Nothing to see here.
What'll be funny is when the line at the airport is held up by some pissed granny in an exoskeleton suit throwing a security screener into a 30 foot ceiling for "making her miss her flight".
Servo Magazine (an offshoot of Nuts and Volts - dedicated to robotics) is sponsoring a competition called "Tetsujin 2004" - aka "Iron Man" - a powered exoskeleton competition, October 21-23, in Santa Clara, CA.
From what I can gather, I imagine it to be basically what happens when you take powered exoskeletons, and combine them with allure of battle robotics (aka, BattleBots, Robot Wars, BotBash, etc). Essentially, let's see what "garage-level" robotics engineers can come up with in the spare time.
I think its going to be interesting - seeing how battle robotics have almost single-handedly brought back hobby robotics from the brink...
Check it out - deadline for registration is in June...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
A mech could, quite reasonably, lift parts of fallen buildings to rescue people, disassemble roadblocks, dig irrigation canals, replace pipes...
As with human bipedalism, the advantage would be adaptablity. Three fingered hands alone would be able to handle very large custom tools like shovels, as well as any debri that happened to be lying around.
Of course, you could just give a tank robot arms if you felt like it... but then you'd need a raised cockpit or shoulder assembly to be able to use those arms in a decent range of motion. Mech on treads. Whee.
The point is, with this adaptability and the increase in labor efficiency, you're not just replacing a tank. You're replacing a tank, a group of six marines doing manual labor, a steamshovel, a forklift... and what you get in return is a forklift/steamshovel/work team/tank with nightvision, radar, gps, etc. Much, much more reasonable than duplicating those features in each one of those tools...
This would primarily be useful in the first few days after the U.S. sweeps in somewhere because of course commodity bulldozers are very cheap, compared to a battle machine, but as the last war showed, people have more and more come to expect the U.S. to have the entire territory that's been damaged repaired within a week. When your genuine bulldozers have to follow five days behind the advance sweeping in somewhere, you can't even begin reapirs until a week after securing the area.
The last thing this kid in the video needs is less exercise. They should shut the machine off and let him drag that equipment around for a hour a day. Now we are talking about progress. Re-defeat Bush in 2004.....
A similiar device was built in the 1960's. It too used hydraulics for force supplement but wasn't too successful. Hydraulic control was analog and not digital and with all analog hydraulic robots, doesn't work very well. The power source was an issue and I can't recall whether it was part of the frame or not. There isn't a lot on web about it (used to be some, good luck finding it now), but it is in books (remember kiddies, those quaint things with writing on paper) One main difference was it included the arms and I think the basic idea was to use it for logging in hard to get areas. Of course 40 years of new materials, digital control and experience with other robots makes it all a bit easier. Still a long way to go, like real robots the whole lot needs wrapping in something tough so it's fragile actuators, sensors and cotnrols don't damaged or snagged
On 60 Minutes Morely Safer interviewed Nan Davis, a student at Wright State University, who'd recently become paraplegic after an accident. They inserted electromyongram electrodes in her muscles, put her on a stationary exercise bike powered by a motor, and recorded her muscles' responses with an Apple II. They built a set of articifial legs and announced their intention to build a small controller and play the recordings back into the device while it was strapped to her, and she would walk. They said at the time they expected it to be ready in 6 to 12 months. She herself stated she was so certain she would walk again, that she refused to get married to her fiance until she could walk up the aisle herself, using this device. She refused to do it in a wheel chair.
/ ferrall.pdf
Only a few weeks later, on the CBS Evening News, Dan Rather read the story of her wedding, with video footage showing her indeed walking up the aisle alone using this device. That was one of the two times I've seen Dan Rather cry on camera (the other being during Apollo 8's reading of Genisis during the first orbit of the moon). CBS made a TV movie based on this, called "First Steps".
I mean, more power to the troops. I carried enough gear enough miles during my enlistments to know how much this would be appreciated. But there's far better uses for this device, and I hope they'll focus as much on those.
I'm glad I didn't submit this as it was. I decided to try to find out what ever happened to Nan Davis. It was surprisingly easy, and came from a surprising source: http://jfs.ohio.gov/women/essayContest/essays2001
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B