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Instead of a Wheel Chair, How About an Exoskeleton?
New submitter the_newsbeagle writes "This year, Ekso Bionics will roll out its most sophisticated exoskeleton ever. The company's robotic walking suit, called the Ekso, allows paraplegics to get back on their feet and walk on their own. The first commercial model will be sold to rehab hospitals for on-site physical therapy, but the company plans to have a model ready for at-home physical therapy by the end of 2012. In a few years, they plan to sell an Ekso that a paraplegic person can wear to the post office, to work, etc."
I still consider it a transitionary solution, useful, but only until we can grow organs and nerve tissue and basically fix people like we fix machinery :)
Call me when you have a flying exoskeleton.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Exoskeletons and robotic limbs are kind of like self-driving cars. Every few years, you see a news report on supposed progress made. Some prototype is demonstrated. And nothing ever comes of it.
So we're always hearing about some great new advancement for paraplegics or amputees and yet every time you walk into a hospital, they're still using the same basic wheelchairs, hooks, and simple artificial limbs they've been using for decades (with a few advancements like electric wheelchairs and improved gripping on the hooks).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What's a post office?
meh
But my experimental exoskeleton segfaulted... :-(
I have a class two rating.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Welcome our new exo-skeleton outfitted Stephen Hawking overlord.
I wouldn't want to tangle with someone with a powered suit of armor.
Would you?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Fwiw, previous coverage on Slashdot of related products:
Human Exoskeletons Getting Closer (March 2009)
Elder-Assist Robotic Suits, From the Real Cyberdyne (October 2009)
eLEGS Exoskeleton Allows Paraplegics To Walk (October 2010)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Who but the ridiculously wealthy will be able to afford them?
Get away from her, you bitch!
Trolling is a art,
... today is a good day. Let's keep along this road to the inevitable endoskeletal/replacement limb assistance for paraplegics. This is an excellent step - no pun intended.
Ah, so THIS will be the year of the exoskeleton then!
I for one am pleased to meet our new robotic exoskeleton overlords.
then send them to fight queen aliens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.A.N.T.I.S.
...when I see a company developing robotic exoskeletons for humans run by a CEO named Bender. This development could cover both "embrace" and "extend". I think we all know what comes next.
Stephen Hawking did this upgrade back in 1997 ;-)
http://www.theonion.com/articles/stephen-hawking-builds-robotic-exoskeleton,1629/
Am I the only one remembering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter_Market ?
The woman in the video is clearly normal minus the use of her limbs, in fact it says
"User Tamara Mena, who was paralyzed in 2005, gleefully puts her exoskeleton walking suit through its paces."
So why did they choose the pose that makes her look "1 drool spot and a birthday hat" away from full blown retarded?
Instead of exoskeleton, why not Zoidberg?
Her boobs look great in that suit!
Sadly, it appears to have been discontinued. But it was far cheaper than $100K, so if J&J couldn't make a go of the cheaper technology, what are the chances of this contraption ever seeing a market?
Have gnu, will travel.
because wheelchairs are just so cheap, lets offer them something more expensive
That'd be great except for a few minor details: Wheelchairs are easier to maintain (fewer moving parts, much larger network of parts and support providers), wheelchairs are easier to transport (they fold up nicely and fit easily in the backseat of a car), they are easy to use (no instruction required, it's very self explanatory), they don't require power (granted, some do, but the average wheelchair is "self powered"), and - here's the kicker - much much much cheaper (yes, i know that theyre very expensive, especially for the high end ones, but compared to the cost of an exoskeleton, they are much cheaper). Personally, I'm all for exoskeletons and I personally know people in wheelchairs who I would love to see up and walking, but the challenges of making this into a reality are massive. That being said, once those challenges are overcome, I will jump in line to purchase one and upgrade/weaponize/harden/repaint/awsome-ize it and proceed to be a nuisance to my neighborhood.
It's funny because Reagan, figurehead of the ideology you parody, became the very drooling retard his regime would toss into the streets to be left to die.
As a non-American, I am in two minds about the guy. On the one hand, his work laid the path to the destruction of America over the following two decades. On the other, like Thatcher, his obsession with selling off the family silver to the most abusive bidder has led to the rise of China.
I love how the person selected for the demonstration is a blonde with huge tits. I'm sure out of all possible users, she was selected at random.
Why not Zoidberg?
"Ah, so THIS will be the year of the exoskeleton on the desktop then!" :-)
Fixed that for ya
I watched the video, and the only thing I could think of was, "This thing is quite rudimentary." It's not even close to seeing the light of day - certainly not by the end of 2012. Don't get me wrong, it's a step in the right direction (pun intended), but not ready for market.
There are simply dozens of ways to address the frailty of the human body and the injuries we acquire as a function of living in a modern society filled with great big moving metal objects. The machines that convey us, so exceed the designs of being human its almost mind numbing. The fastest vehicles travel faster than Mach 20. The human body is designed to travel at distance at around at 5-10 mph and in short sprints at around 15 mph. You fall or bang into something going that fast and you will probably sprain or break something. Simply incredible.
The first thing we will do is augment externally. This is however crude and inelegant. Shortly after we will begin to seriously augmenting internally (actually these trends are already in place, there are plenty of implant for the human body today, but that number is soon to explode), and there will be significant overlap between the two. Next we will have control of our physiology at the genetic then molecular level with the advent of nanotechnology and our bodies will become artwork. Designs that will be interesting, unique, specific to a given need. This will be the beginning of true super humans, and the species with transform. Finally, as our augmented selves determine the best materials from which to build bodies and minds, we may well migrate from protein. Who's to say.
Then we can get rid of almost all that damned handicapped parking.
And if someone does take the remaining space so the poor sod who can't use an exoskeleton can't use it, another guy with an exoskeleton can just pick up the car and move it out of the way.
I want to be able to feel my feet trampled over instead of rolled over for a change, dammit! I hope they don't forget "sexy" in making those exoskeletons. The future of machine assisted sex will be interesting.
You don't need organ replacements for this effect. Just grow older. You'll genuinely feel like a different person/being.
uses in the army and they spend big time to pay for stuff like this.
Really?
And you post on slashdot? Why?
Please turn in your Geek card and don't let the portal vaporize your ass on the way out.
Cheers.
What if you stay conscious during the transfer to a new substrate?
To use a car analogy, say you drive your car up a ramp into a large truck, step out of your car, dump the car off the truck, then continue driving in the truck.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
FYI, there was a TED talk about Ekso (formerly Berkeley Bionics): http://www.ted.com/talks/eythor_bender_demos_human_exoskeletons.html
will there BE post offices to walk to 'in a few years'?
I certainly never expected my Golden years would end up looking like an episode of Exosquad
but but but this is just what they've always been waiting for! If we digitize ourselves, or teleport/copy ourselves, won't "the life of the author" effectively be forever? At least the Pirate Party might gain some traction after the common culture and public domain have been completely scraped clean of anything remotely monetizable...
I can see many situation where an exoskeleton would be a great benefit, but not this one. Why are we using a mechanical device to solve a signalling issue?
Surely with Paraplegics it would be easier and take far less power to electrically stimulate their existing muscles - either externally through TENS devices, or via implanted electrodes.
How does this model compare to the exoskeletons the military has developed to let soldiers carry more weight? I get that there is some added sophistacation in the balancing and control algorthms needed to assist a parapalegic. But I wonder if the robotics is actually better or different. Is this just the same model as the military version but spun off for medical use?
Does anyone remember this show?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.A.N.T.I.S.
There's an Asimov short story "It's Such a Beautiful Day" that features a society that prides itself (due to the expense) on using only Doors (Stargate-like portals) to travel between buildings, never going or even seeing outside; and a boy who chooses an unusual way to return from school.
Most of the replacement is in part of the cell going out and in, not a total cell replacement, occuring only after cell death which happens much more rarely in the brain than in the rest of the body. So whereas it is true that our "molecules/atoms" are getting shifted around while the cells live, it is a fallacy to generalize that and say our cell in our brain are so much getting replaced that we are only a patern.
You are not a self "propagating patern", what the heck is that anyway ? Made up definition day ? The brain as we understand it is a serie of cell , neurone , interconnected in a vast network. Each neurone has its own potential, triggering, connection to many other neighbor neurons. Learning change those connection and potentiel triggering. "you" are not only the set of potential each neuron has, you are a whole , the set of potential at any moment WITH the network connection. You may be changing from day to day, but that change is gradual and not certainly not in neuron replacement.
Now I can imagine giving the argument of replacing neuron by neuron with a silicon equivalent (which is not IMHO "uploading", as uploading would mean you jsut copy the neuron potential patern in a network having the same structure and behavior as the neuron). I think it would work since baring mythic things like "souls", we are just machines, complicated machines with massive parallel circuit and emergent associated property, but just machine. Now the technology to do that is as far away as you can imagine.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Gift first one to Stefhan Hawking, & test it out.
Would have modded you myself, but I wanted to comment, since you made an excellent point. Certain services, like the post office, and passenger rail are vital infrastructure for any modern nation. If they manage to be self-sufficient, without needing taxpayer money, the better. But they are needed services even if they require subsidies. In these cases, public funding and operation provide better service for the users than any private attempt to do the same thing.
Only replying to this troll due to having too much Ambien and not much better to do at the moment.
We need to do *more* for cripples, rather than less, because having them just sit there trying to survive off of disability cheques is a waste of resources. It makes more sense to help them contribute more. I remember sitting on a bus one day talking with some guy with no legs who was frustrated that his nearly broken wheelchair would take a few months to replace. The guy had all the credentials needed to become a psychologist. I'd *hope* that the folks at the Social Security office would do more than just hand him enough to avoid starvation and homelessness, but to maybe provide mental therapy *he* could have used (at least to overcome depression related to being stuck on disability), or at least a list of jobs at the local VA for qualified individuals. I'd figure, that a soldier coming back missing bits would more likely identify with a shrink who was also an amputee. Most disabled people *want* to work, and most *can* if given a bit of help.
Oh, and hell, even retards are probably giving more to society than you. Just about everyone I've ever met who had Downs is a far better person than you'll ever be in your pathetic lifetime, and plenty of them manage to take care of themselves, work, and pay taxes.
http://youtu.be/RKZdsPvJq60?t=11m51s
There's a book or movie about this. I remember only a couple details of it from when I was a kid. Something went wrong with the transportation system. The person was teleported, but the original station never got the ok signal and the original person was kept alive. Years later (the new person was on some long, distant mission/general work/something), somehow they both are discovered to be alive. Use of the teleporters were not every day occurrences, or at least they were shrowded in some sort of mistery (I think).
Anyone know what I'm referring to? If /. doesn't know, I don't know who else would.