Commercial Exoskeletons

FalconZero writes "For those of you with superhuman aspirations, your dream may be a step closer; New Scientist (recently) and the Japan Times (last year) covered Yoshiyuki Sankai's work at the University of Tsukuba in Japan developing powered exoskeletons with commercial versions expected soon costing between $14,000 and $19,000 (£7,500-£10,000). Other work with exoskeletons previously covered here(1), here(2) and here(3)."

Comments

Exoman

[WeirdKid]

So I was trying to find one *good* Exoman site, and I couldn't find any. (It was a short-lived 1977 TV series about a paralyzed scientist who created his own exo-suit in which he would fight crime yada yada yada).

Blame it on Gundam

[Neo-Rio-101]

I'm pretty sure that only reason why they're even devising these things is because of Japan's robot anime. You know, some guy jumps into a huge robot and control it through sensors all over his body.

There is some guy here in Japan who is that crazy about the anime that developed his own exo-skeleton to move his toy Mazinga robot around. They had him on TV wearing his Mazinga get up and fighting other geek's toy robots on one of the TV shows here. Apparently there are a lot of these robot hobbyists as well as uni students building these things.

Mazinga, BTW, is a really old anime, but not far removed from the likes of say Gundam, Voltron and a billion and one other ripoffs.

May be tackling the wrong problem

[DumbSwede]

Neat as this stuff is, I doubt it will really help the majority of mobility impaired like my father. My father suffered from severe arthritis that left his knees and hips unable to bear his weight, and of course flexing them was excruciating, assisted or not.

A lot of wear an tear is from load bearing, and perhaps these powered suite address this to a degree, but I suspect in many cases they would exacerbate the problem for arthritis sufferers by adding to the weight load on joints, even while enabling superhuman lifting capabilities.

Even if they address the load issue on joints, it is overkill from what is really needed by tens of millions. I have not seen such a thing, but does anyone know of some kind of lightweight synchronized brace system? Something that would distribute the body's load to the hips directly and lock when the joints aren't moving? I have seen leg braces before, but not articulated ones that auto-lock. One thing that my father believed contributed to the breakdown of his joints were the long periods he spent standing doing his job as a chef. Again, a locking brace system would seem the answer for people that need to be on their feet long periods, but may have the beginnings of joint break down.