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Elder-Assist Robotic Suits, From the Real Cyberdyne
Tasha26 writes "No, not the one which will end up building terminator robots. BBC's Click brings news of a Japanese company, Cyberdyne, which is in the process of building different robotic suits to assist the elderly in accomplishing simple body tasks such as walking and lifting. Even though still in R&D, this video (@3m15s) shows a pretty promising future for the elderly."
"Walk-around" actually sounds less advanced than "Hoverround."
They named their company Cyberdyne and later realized their mistake did they? I highly doubt this, clever marketing though. On the other hand I have a coworker who IS actually named John Conner, poor man we covered his office in tin foil while he was on vacation, left him a nice note explaining that we are trying to hide him from satellite surveillance. Did lead to one of the greatest owned moments I have ever seen, our boss from NJ was handing out our new Blackberry Tours, everyone on the IT team got one but John, Jay says "I just thought in the interest of personal safety....these things have GPS tracking you know." He did actually get one of course, but not before we set his ringtone to say "Come with me if you want to live." and play the theme.
As long as they don't start asking if we've got stairs in our houses, I think we're fine.
What an unprecedented and exciting development.
I can already see it "Get off my lawn before I fire some missiles up your ass, you damn noisy kids!"
... Prof. Sankai and his team specially designed "HAL" for climbing mountains and "HAL" can even work even in the snow at 4000 meters height. ...
The latest battery runs for 5 hours under normal activities.
I think I'll hold off on the mountain climbing for now.
"No, not the one which will end up building terminator robots."
How can you be so sure? Are you from the future?
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
...welcome our new eldery overloads!
"Computer, deliver me to checkpoint D. And wake me up when we're there."
...is actually just down the road from my apartment. Kind of freaky walking past a place with "CYBERDYNE" plastered all over it every morning.
"Even though still in R&D, this video (@3m15s) shows a pretty promising future for the elderly."
Well once Slashdot get's all the Terminator references out of their system and focuses on the video. What's interesting is twofold. One how well the systems actually work, and just how compact they really are. I also suspect that Tokyo would be most geeks wet dream.
Where do you think the organic components of the Terminator come from? Why do you think the Terminator has such a crotchety disposition? It's made from old people!
Combine a century or more of experience and decades of having young people mess up their lawns with power and speed and it spells trouble. Even worse than the Terminator is the next step, purely biological exoskeletons for old people. I mean, what do you think Aliens are other than bio-enhanced old people with exoskeletons and acid for blood?
Making old people weak is nature's way of protecting the young.
Don't mess with mother nature.
(For the humor impaired: :-)
This has been around and in production for quite a while: http://www.rslsteeper.com/orthotics/orthotic-products/argo The website only shows a half body setup, I understand they also do a full body suit.
I shouldn't do this, but here goes: If you don't want to need a Cyberdyne 2000 to help you walk around when you're older, do weight training. It helps the aging retain muscle mass.
Im afraid you can't do that.
I have nothing against advancing robotics, whatsoever.
But, many of the problems with the elderly being physically infirm can be treated with steroids. Society has this bizarre view of steroids of being a horrible drug causing anything from cancer to rage to psychotic episodes. The DEA has it listed as a Schedule III drug, which carries a worse fine for possession than Xanax, Rohypnol, Valium and Halcion. Anabolic steroids are on the same DEA classification as LSD. From a legal standpoint, they view as equal what is essentially a drug that increases the rate at which proteins fold to the most powerful hallucinogen known to man.
Give the elderly steroids, and let their doctors monitor them. Keep going with robotics, but steroids are here now.
If you're curious where your drug of choice lands on the DEA schedule, here's a link:
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/scheduling.html
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
The Terminators are made of people!
I, for one, welcome our new elder overlords
Serious is not welcome here. This is digg, not slashdot.
by these guys
Hopefully with the same results, it'd be nice to have some REAL news for a change.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"Control unit on back" - sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
Just imagine iif my dad, who turns 77 today, were to receive this kind of contraption as a present. My cranky dad controlling a mech? Run for the hills!
My dad has a master's degree in electrical engineering and likes to modify stuff (electrical and non-) to suit his needs.
Oh, did I mention my dad got a black belt in Shotokan karate back in the '80s? I swear I am not making this up.
Right, I should mention something basic about Dad: he is a collector of militaria and weapons, especially edged weapons, but he has a sizable number of firearms too.
I, for one, would not welcome our heavily armed, flak jacketed, cybernetically enhanced, grumpy old black belt overlord.
Happy birthday, Dad!
No, he won't actually read this, but it seemed appropriate to say.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Sorry, someone beat you to it.
Because you know, email is the preferred method of communication among the elderly in Korea
Now I can chase those kids off my lawn.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
....I've fallen down and I can't get.... er... the clap!
Honestly, that's pretty much the first thought I got.
The one thing we can't yet properly fix is our brains. We are constantly gaining longer and longer durations for our life due to medical advances (though increasingly unhealthy lifestyles fight back). It means that our bodies stay working longer and longer despite our brains slowly rotting away.
I, for one, do not want to have our demented elderly walking around with suits that provide superhuman strength.
Not only that, but these will no doubt lead to higher ages of retirement as we will be physically fit longer. Up to this date it has been easy to say "Well, firefighters must be able to retire at age 50. They can't do their job after that!" but after this? Retirement ages for all physically demanding jobs are sure to increase. So we will have to work as long as our brains have any functionality left, after which we can be buried.
I can of course hope that sufficiently advanced AI and robotic servants will fix that, but I have my doubts.
"I'm a cybernetic organism; old, living tissue under metal exoskeleton. My CPU is not working correctly. Maybe my grandson can help me with my learning computer. I think it's the modem."
This system purports to be able to be use to increase mobility of the elderly; why are all the people in the demos young?
I think it is because it still needs quite a bit of strength and balance to use. Walking and balance are very complex. Look at the joints. They are all single plane actuators. You can not duplicate the complex movements of the hip with that. In the plane of the actuator you get a power boost but it does not help in other directions.
Take a look at the foot. A big part of balance is the big toe. It that is not strong enough it does not matter if the ankle is strong you will still fall.
What about the elderly where their inner ear is not functioning correctly. If the input to the system is incorrect the person will fall.
As a strength enhancer possible; as an elderly mobility device probably not
And we here at Old Glory Insurance offer coverage for you. For when your retirement community neighbor grabs hold of you, and you can't get away - because they're metal, and robot suits are strong. Old Glory.
As i recall there was an earlier Mentioning of this product made by Cyberdyne, and it was Called HAL (Human Assistive Limb)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/09/008203&tid=216
I think it is ironic that this brit is worried about a fictional catastrophe from a unimportant robot company in Japan making a ridiculous suit when the UK already has created the big brother state in 1984 to spec in reality. LOL
I am sorry but you are just too old to drive saftely any more. You have to surender your licence. Not to worry though here is your robotic suit.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
... you can't break free, because they're made of metal, and robots are strong.
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/clips/old-glory-insurance/229049/
Wake me up when they start building Cyclones.
I can't believe nobody has mentioned Roujin Z yet... it's an Anime from the guy who made Akira about an automated hospital robot taking care of an old man that -- gasp -- turns out to secretly be a testbed for combat robot components, which leads to full-on geriatric mecha combat.
This technology is a Good Thing iff the elderly people wearing the exoskeletons are healthier as a result. Moving around and bearing (your own) weight is good, so if it makes the elderly patient more likely to ambulate, there could be a big net benefit. If their muscles get weaker because they had a machine helper, it's a step backward. I'd be interested to see actual experimental results with real infirm elderly rather than theoretical, marketing-imagined elderly.
In the USA we just load our old folks into a "Rascal" and they go to physical therapy twice a week.
In japan they get physical therapy all of the time by means of a mobile power assist suit.
We pretty much suck....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
And elderly bones are even more brittle. ...like peanut brittle.
When spouting made-up bullshit, it's generally better not to include a link to a website that directly refutes said bullshit. You might think you're adding credibility to your claim by having a reference while counting on reader laziness to prevent them from clicking the link. But what you've really done is just lower the bar for the hordes of /.ers just waiting to prove someone wrong.
In case you're actually dumb and not just trolling, your link says LSD is Schedule I and anabolic steroids are Schedule III. That's very different legally.
Oh and doctors prescribe steroids all the time, the social stigma against bodybuilders using them has no effect on them. Get a clue.