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Robotic Legs Instead of Wheelchairs
smooth wombat writes "Atsuo Takanishi, an engineering professor at Tokyo's Waseda University, has demonstrated a pair of robotic legs that may one day eliminate the need for wheelchairs.
At the demonstration in Tokyo, one of Takanishi's students rode the robot -- which bears some resemblance to the mechanical "Wrong Trousers" of Wallace and Gromit fame -- up and down a staircase and along a pebbly path outdoors.
A picture of the demonstration may be found here " Still waiting for my Gundam but that's a good start.
...and they've gone wrong!
Jory
somehow i get the impression this is not intended for the gian robot fanatic demographic..
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Only two legs? I'm surprised they didn't go with four. Sure, it's a little bit harder to work with. However, it would seem to be quite a bit more stable as well, especially when the power fails.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
It takes two joysticks to control... how much of an improvement is this over wheelcheers? What of those with limited or no use of their hands. While the legs seem cool, are they really practical?
I think this is great, but it will still take some time to be used in daily life. This looks like one of the biped robots we have seen in the last years who has the possibility to carry a person. These bots can balance each step, but they are always in balance. A person which is walking or running is not in a permanent state of standing, but falling. To move forward at a reasonable pace you have to abandon stability and use gravity to draw you forward and reestablishing balance once you set down your foot.
This is difficult enough on a fixed floor (watch babies learn to walk), but much harder on something like grass or inside a moving train. Considering how long it took to get robots to even stand it will still take some time to walk. So if you depend on a wheelchair today and would like to actually move at decent speeds, you may be out of luck for some time.
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Mention Stephen Hawking got there first!
Now if this eliminates old guys on those damn Rascals, I'm all for the metal pants even if they are up to their armpits
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
...So, these things come out, and someone programs a macro that gets them out of bed, into the trousers, walks to the bureau and stands for fifteen minutes, then walks out of the house, down the stairs, and to work. Unfortunately, the owner has recently become deceased, and the trousers, not programmed to account for little things like that still executes its normal routine...
I don't know which would be creepier, it doing that with the corpse, or it leaving the house empty...
And with that I'm reminded of a short story about an automated house...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
When this contraption fails (because it will, inevitably), I don't want to be the one caught under it. A wheelchair may be inconvenient, but at least will not break your neck in case of a mechanical failure. And if the battery goes dead, a wheelchair can be moved using hands or somebody can push it. If this thing looses power, you are pretty much stuck.
If the device is going to be like the one in the picture I see another advantage. Raise the wheelchair user to eyelevel with standing people.
Of course this wouldn't be slashdot if someone didn't come up with a lame weak point. This thing can't be pushed if the battery runs out. Granted, electric wheel chairs especially the models used by the elderly can't be pushed without being handicapped yourselve but still.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
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This development is simply brilliant. It shows continued progress in the development of disability products.
I would have thought the main problem with such a device is balance. Bi pedal movements main hang up is balance, and as such, having such a top heavy unit must be a fairly difficlut task to combat.
Imagine it! the worlds buildings are just getting started in providing adequate service levels for wheelchair users, and the japanese bring out a unit that need no ramps!
D'Oh!
>>>Scanning for I.D.I.O.T.S. >>>
>>>I.D.I.O.T.S. FOUND! >>>
/Feathers McGraw rubs his flippers together evilly
do not take on a lodger, especially one that looks like a penguin in chicken costume!
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Here's your off road wheelchair answer
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Wheelchairs at least have WHEELS that ROLL and can have motorized assist. So if you have Doc Oct legs, next you need to haul a backup generator, or a strong guy to carry you when out of power...
Talk about being truly disabled.
I'm really sick of people not noting the distinction. Even the recent Asimo demonstration with "running" was very obviously "playing the 'walk' loop at 2x speed".
While generally a human can "freeze" at various points in his walking step, he is not able to do so without extra effort. So far, I've not seen a [practical] robot which walks by falling (as you put it).
Asimo is a good demonstration of unnatural "overly balanced" walking. You can see the way it is sortof "hunched over" as it moves with its knees always bent a little-too-much.
I always wonder why people waste their time building robots instead of working out a computer simulation of real human walking (not motion capture). It would give so much more information than spending all that time and money on something physical, only to have it run around like it has diarhea.
p.s.: Robot in article does not look like "the wrong trousers" in the slightest.
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You see the plan is to market it to people who have all ready broken their neck. They really won't care if they break it a second time because well what are they going to complain about. They are all ready a parapalegic.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
I would have guesses the existing technology used for robotic spider could have been re-used.
Should be cheaper to build - with little or no problem of falling, balancing s/w could be reduced. Also, there is no issue of falling in case of catastrophic failure in anything.
Maybe it might be unsuitable to bipedal based enviornments, but should be better than wheels.. right ?
rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
I remember a quote for N.T. Stephenson's snowcrash, where Ng, the cyber-genius character, said something along the lines of: "i've tried a lot of prosthetic libs, they were good, I could walk almost like i used to, but wheelchair is still faster and easier to handle." And my two cents are: I welcome the development in this area, but I think that future will be in biomech - artificially grown flesh limbs with some mechanical parts.
Lone Gunmen crew.
Some days I'd rather not get off my fat ass, but robo-legs would get me outdoors to take a walk (fresh air, vit-D, etc). I'd program my walks ahead of time so I could do other things while 'walking'. Hell maybe the legs could walk the dog without me being present. Of course I've always though aural/braille would be cool to give my eyes a break.
You see the plan is to market it to people who have all ready broken their neck. They really won't care if they break it a second time because well what are they going to complain about. They are all ready a parapalegic.
But paraplegics can still use their arms. If they break their neck because of this stupid thing, then they'ld be quadraplegic and need robotic arms as well as legs. Of course, that just means more money for the makers of robotic limbs, so I guess they'ld call it a feature, not a bug.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
It's just too big, cumbersome, and impractical. Not to mention expensive. It'll never go mainstream.
See; http://www.independencenow.com/home.html# It can climb up and down stairs, raise you up to eye level of other standing humans, handle gravel and other rougher terrain. Costs 20k, but If I needed a wheelchair, that's the one I'd get.
Ian Ameline
Even if the power doesn't fail, what if it trips? Who here has never fallen down the stairs, ever?
I forsee lawsuits in the future of this technology. "Wheelchair replacement protects grandma at the bottom of the stairs"
:x
Pfft, Stephen Hawking has had this beat for years.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Because we're to the passive-dynamic-walking-robot-has-been-built stage. It can be done in labratory conditions; search google for "dynamic stability". It's just not as stable as the other kind, so can't do things that are nearly as impressive - like manage stairs - without further development.
Wait. The statically stable robots make money to fund the development of workable dynamically stable ones.
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Given the extra height you maybe when they try to negate a doorway. Perhaps a quick re-brand is needed?
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Here is Professor Hawking's early research into the field
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I don't know about you guys - but given the choice of being "bumped" by a wheelchair or being walked on by one of these - I think I would rather get bumped.
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This can navigate stairs?!
Don't let the Daleks get a hold of this or we don't stand a chance against them!
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All you need is a whole bunch of them and a front-mounted chaingun. Then all your pesky cyberdemon cyberdemon troubles are over!
I think some designer watched Episode 1 too many times with the walking robotic chair!
Here's the Prior Art...
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anakin_Skywalker
So...where's my +5 informative?
And here I am using my legs like a sucker!
I have a "Zero Policy" tolerance.
*/
Anyone think this headline and the previous "Vista Firewall to be Crippled" showed up way too close to each other?
Great. Eventually handicapped people will be able to get bionic legs. They will run faster, never tire out and still qualify for closer parking.
From the Segway guy, this wheelchair can climb stairs and tackle pebbly paths.:-P
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I'm pretty sure they got everything under control down there.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
He's right though, giving up your hands just so you can go up/down stairs is not a reasonable trade-off.
People in wheelchairs are USING THEIR HANDS TO TURN THE WHEELS.
You can't take the sky from me...
I want electronic legs just because I'm lazy!
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I saw an article a while back about a Japanese doctor that developed a set of robotic powered exo-legs that help lift and walk and such. They were going to help a senior citizen climb to the summit of a mountain. I can't remember the specifics but I still like that idea best. If designed correctly and the power fails, the legs could assume a crouching position.
Notice how I said people with broken necks and then wrote paraplegic instead of quadraplegic.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
FYI: I found this on the web last week and have no affiliation with the site.
Oh, and while the videos are very cool, let's try not to kill this guy's bandwidth. Perhaps someone with experience setting them up can post a reply with a coral cache or other mirror to prevent any slashdotting. I'd rather his money go to helping other people get these chairs than to a bunch of nerds hogging bandwidth. ;)
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Now they're first to get giant mecha robot suits.
Vista Firewall to be Crippled
Meanwhile, there's Kamen's US$20,000 iBot that accomplishes many of the same feats, but can't be afforded by most of the people that could use this kind of equipment. Remember that the cost of an electric wheelchair is only part of what's needed for true independence; there's also customization of a vehicle to transport the chair, which is pretty damn expensive. Contrary to popular belief, insurance, Medicare, etc. generally will not cover anything beyond the most basic equipment.
And you won't care if someone parked in the handicapped spot!
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Watch this: Robota
An awesome brickfilm about a robot who gets robotic legs instead of a wheel chair.
From the broad, shallow social perspective, I do think it makes a whole lot more sense to focus a lot of money on increasing the ability of the disabled to participate in the physical world unassisted (as through something like this, R&D $$ intensive or no,) than it does to spend an equivalent amount of resources on the converse - trying to make the phyiscial world more accessible to the disabled (via curb cuts, handicapped spaces, extra-wide bathrooms, etc.) I'm confident that the several billion $US / year focused on the latter could make some huge strides in the former at better cost...
Wheelchairs at least have WHEELS that ROLL and can have motorized assist. So if you have Doc Oct legs, next you need to haul a backup generator, or a strong guy to carry you when out of power...
Keep in mind, the picture shows a proof of concept. I would imagine a final version that goes to market would be a hybrid, having both legs and wheels. Where the wheels would be the primary because the legs would walk too slow and use up alot of battery. The legs would only be used for things like stairs and rough terrain.
And to those who say, "What about the people without use of hands?", RTFA
There's no place like ~/
If you've ever been to Japan, you'd know why they work so hard to come up with these wheelchair alternates - much of the country is simply not wheelchair friendly. From the wonderful train system with it's stair-ridden stations, to small alleys and smaller shops, Tokyo and Kyoto were not very wheelchair friendly places. It's a cramped (by western standards) and vertical environment. The abscence of wheelchairs was one of the things that struck us on our visit. Even if it's a catch-22 - no wheelchairs out and about because it's so tough, and it's tough because because none are out and about - the only way to break it is with something like this.
> cat ~/.signature | grep -v bullshit
>
I'm an amputee. I have health insurance through my employer. It's a mega-company. They will not pay one dime for any prosthetics - new, repairs, modifications - nothing. So this sort of news is fairy dust to us who aren't wealthy.
Just imagine if half the tax dollars spent to equip buildings for wheelchair access had instead been spent on R&D to develop stuff like this! Not only would the rest of us be much less inconvenienced, but people with disabilities would likely get around better than everyone else.
I think the reason the Japanese don't like the standard wheel chair and keep coming up with "wheel chairs" that can climb stairs is because all they have there are stairs and no ramps. In my brief visit I saw all of one wheel chair ramp. That ramp was only accessible after going up some stairs first. I would hate to be in a wheel chair in Japan.
this is the most important sig ever! In your face 446154!
The legs appear to be made with 5 parallel actuators, much like the Stewart-Gough platform used in motion simulators, machine tools, and the like. This is an extremely stable design that is very fault tolerant and able to remain stable, even if any one of the actuators becomes disabled.
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
Atsuo Takanishi, an engineering professor at Tokyo's Waseda University, has demonstrated a pair of robotic legs that may one day eliminate the need for wheelchairs.
Unfortunately, no. Even if this product is without flaws, it cannot eliminate the need for wheelchairs -- not everyone is in a wheelchair because only their legs don't work properly. A paraplegic would have a really hard time operating the joysticks -- although, from TFA, there are plans to develop controls that would "model that could function more freely without such input". Even so, some people are in wheelchairs because something wrong with their brains or the way that their brains communicate with the rest of their body. Yet these people still have to get to (or be brought from) point A to point B. Also, as many people have pointed out, wheelchairs will still have to be alternative until robotic legs become both affordable and never run out of power.
The goal is noble, but these robotic legs could never "eliminate the need for wheelchairs" or "replace wheelchairs" completely. Yes, this is a nitpick. I just hate it when (admittedly interesting) innovations create false hope by being mis-marketed as the be-all and end-all by over-enthusiastic people.
This approach applied to paraplegia would go along way to re-humanizing people stuck in wheelchairs. Even more so than Dean Kamen's four/two wheel stabilized wheelchair.
http://sanlab.kz.tsukuba.ac.jp/indexE.html
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,
I'm not sure true running will ever be practical for such applications. The constant up-and-down motion of the passenger can be very uncomfortable, especially for someone with limited mobility and and/or potentially overweight from lack of motion. The person would have to either hold on for dear life (in which case two axis joysticks would be all but useless for control), or be strapped in, or most likely both. Besides, a machine doesn't have the same motion limitations as a human: artifical legs can have multiple axes of articulation and can potentially move much faster, removing the need for inverted pendulum motion for high speed. In an ideal case the servos would have so much precision and high resolution feedback that the passenger "compartment" would only experience linear forward motion without any vertical or lateral components.
Umm, hello?!
Dual analog stick control is so last gen. They should just hook a Nintendo Revolution controller interface up to it.
*Ducks*
Direct link: http://sanlab.kz.tsukuba.ac.jp/HAL/indexE.html
The article fails to mention that the robotic suit incorporates a beatbox, PA, and turntable synthesizer. Details can be found on http://www.mchawking.com/
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
First of all.. If this thing stepped on your foot you'd be in some serious pain.
Second.. If this thing tipped over it'd not only hurt the rider, but also whomever was unfortunate enough to be under it.
I'm guessing this will go over like a lead balloon. Of course, that's what I said about the segway. (That website still cracks me up. Our police on campus putt along in these stupid things. It's a fact: The only thing less intimidating than a cop on a bicycle is a cop on a segway.)
It was no uncommon to have to help some wheelchair user get either unstuck because they misjudged the roadsurface OR help them get around an obstacle. With normal wheel chairs it is already a pain but the electric ones are fucking heavy (or at least were 20 years ago).
So based on observation I would say an alternative to easily stuck wheels that would allow a handicapped person to use the same terrain a walking person can use would be a benefit.
Yeah, specially adapated chairs for special terrain would be nice for outings perhaps but they probably ain't suited for daily use. This ads costs and again doesn't help if a person suddenly finds themselves needing an all-terrain chair when they are in their regular chair.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
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Let's not discount the major stride for personal fitness this represents. Think of how many miles I can click off on the treadmill with a pair of these babies! I'll be in the best shape of my life, and I won't even spill my beer while I'm doing it if they make the hydraulics smooth enough...
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Does it come with a helmet?
During the 1980's the US federal government made itself odious to every small business by forcing them to spend thousands of dollars installing wheelchair ramps regardless of whether they had any customers who used wheelchairs or not.
In a decade or so, when robo-trousers replace wheelchairs, that will at last put an end to all those plywood ramps sticking out to the side of resturaunt and bar entrances. Equality through technology.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
I found video of the V2 walker (today's demo was the V3) here:a rallel/WL-16rr/movie/stair_c.mpg
a rallel/WL-16rr/index.htm
a rallel/WS-1&1R/index.html
http://www.takanishi.mech.waseda.ac.jp/research/p
Hmmm, the rider looks a little nervous...
The video is from the university page at:
http://www.takanishi.mech.waseda.ac.jp/research/p
They are also working on a reactive foot for walking on uneven surfaces:
http://www.takanishi.mech.waseda.ac.jp/research/p
Very promising stuff. Hopefully the multiple linear actuators will make it somewhat fault tolerant. Now where's my Gundam?
Nick Donaldson mailto:psyclops@psyclops.com Bit Wrangler Extraordinaire! http://www.psyclops.com/
These kinds of stories are pretty much irrelevant to the disabled community. These kinds of breakthroughs are a dime a dozen and are reported on a weekly basis. The actual device, procedure, hypothetical breakthrough, etc., is actually 10 to 20 years out. And don't get me started on the rats. :-) If we all could utilize the constant stream of breakthroughs that rats enjoy everyone would be disease-free. I'm surprised there are any uncured rats left to experiment on. Remember the stair-climbing wheelchair built by the Segway guy? I have never seen one except on television. Have you?
but i belive a dead electric wheelchair would be very difficult to move. Those things contain big heavy battery packs.
If you are relying on a machanical aid you have to plan for supplying it. This applies whether its a car, a powered wheelchair a ride on walker or a powersuit.
yeah sometimes progress brings with it worse failure modes. With appropriate diligence though theese should be manageable just as they are manageable for aircraft today.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Wheelchairs are also used for cases where someone is temporarily injured, and many other cases where the patient still has legs and would rather not have them cut off in favor of machinery.
That's the best thing I've ever heard!
running on your own legs is very uncomfortable if you are overweight or not used to it. But if you start doing it regularlly you'll get used to it.
now the fact that the bounce isn't controlled by the body may make it worse but i still think its something people could get used to just as people get used to being on ships and similar.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
> i still think its something people could get used to just as people get used to being on ships and similar.
Yeah, but ships don't experience high frequency oscillations as in running, something like two beats per second. You still have the issue of stabilizing the passenger during such constant motion, and of what type of controls would allow precision steering. Joysticks obviously would not work, since they would instinctively also be used as handholds in this contraption, which removes any capacity for fine control. Ok, I have to admit, as a recreational vehicle such as running machine could certainly be a bucketful of fun, but only for reasonably fit and mobile people.
I own a pair of trousers.
Ah, good times.
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