This wearable exoskeleton could one day turn your grandparents into cyborgs
May has been a big month for personal robotics. Hyundai made titanic superpowered "Iron Man" exoskeletons, and now Harvard's Wyss Institute announced that it's teaming up with ReWalk, a robotics company, to make a soft exoskeleton for people suffering from lower body problems.
The target market for this includes seniors, people who've suffered from strokes, and people with multiple sclerosis. So keep tabs on your parents and grandparents: they could be cyborgs one day.
The suit works a little like an image stabilizer in a camera.
There are some actuators in the belt that detect shaky movements. The suit then stabilizes those movements in real-time, reducing the stress and fatigue from the patient attempting to rebalance themselves.
"There is a great need in the health care system for lightweight, lower-cost wearable exoskeleton designs to support stroke patients, individuals diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and senior citizens who require mechanical mobility assistance," said Larry Jasinski, CEO of ReWalk in a statement.
If the exoskeleton above looks familiar to you, it's because it's not a completely new design. The Wyss Institute has been working on exoskeletons for around two years. The team even received $2.9 million in funding from DARPA, the US government's futuristic technology arm, to develop the suit so that soldiers on the field would suffer less from muscle cramps.