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Japan Displays Prototype Robot Suit
anaesthetica writes "A project at Tsukuba University has produced a battery-powered robot suit designed to aid the wearer in strength-related tasks, like lifting heavy objects. The suit also has the capability of propelling itself, which is potentially useful for helping the handicapped or elderly walk. The optimistic professor who lead the project stated, 'Humans may be able to mutate into supermen in the near future.'"
All this stuff is based on motors ... why not use EAP's instead (electro activated polymers)? I understand we have very good ones now that are superior to even human muscles and more weight / power efficient than motors. Would make the system less bulky and more fluid/without rigid parts.
Japan has seen a growing market for technology geared toward the elderly, who are making up an increasing chunk of the population as fewer younger Japanese choose to start families.
A government report last week showed that pensioners made up a record 19.5 percent of the country's population in 2004 and that the ratio will grow rapidly, surpassing 35 percent in 2050.
Did anyone else shudder at the image of senior citizens ambling down the street in robot suits? Just imagine the damage potential.
We're moving this weekend, and this will certainly help on moving the washer, dryer, fridge, and couch.
On the other hand, you could put heavy polycarbonate armour on it and make your riot cops safer.
That article says that the suit can "move on it's own." I wonder if such a thing could eventually be used to get, for example, an unconscious firefighter out of a burning builder, etc. Now that would be a great use of technology.
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Unless it's tapping directly into their brains (which it isn't), those signals aren't getting transmitted to the point where handicapped people will be allowed to walk.
I suppose if you expanded the group of "handicapped" to include those suffering from polio and other diseases that result muscular dystrophy, then I can see this argued, but paraplegics and quadraplegics are not going to be helped, despite the claims of the article.
And I'll take -1 Offtopic again for saying so.
Note: I have no beef with 99.9% of the senior population but my car was totaled by a member of the remaining 0.1% a few years back by him pulling onto a main street with blinders on. Daylight too. Luckily the old man survived without permanent injury. However, he'd have been better off letting someone else drive.
Indeed, even parts of the real hardsuit looks like they were designed by Kenichi Sonoda (The character designer/mecha designer of Bubblegum Crisis). Maybe the engineers got the inspiration from Bubblegum Crisis itself.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
It's still not as cool as this...
Triggur's Mech (Triggur, forgive me!)