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Robotic Prostheses, Suits, Exoskeletons & Individual Conveyances

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Navy’s Exoskeleton Could Make Workers 20 Times More Productive

Military work is physically demanding—and we’re not just talking about soldiers on the battlefield. Travel down the chain, and you’ll find plenty of positions where strength and stamina are highly valued skills. Take the Navy for example. The Navy needs ships and those ships need to be built and maintained—a rough, physically draining job. Sandblasting, riveting, and grinding excess metal off the ships can take a toll on the human body. You’re often carrying tools that can weigh upwards of 30 pounds. “There’s a lot of wear and tear on you,” says Adam Miller, director of new initiatives for Lockheed Martin. “Skilled workers can maybe do that for three to four minutes then they need to put the tool down and they need to rest.”

For the past couple of years, Miller has been leading a team of engineers and designers to create one of the first industrial-use exoskeletons. Called the FORTIS, the exoskeleton is able to support tools of up to 36 pounds and transfer that load from a worker’s hands and arms to the ground. The goal is to lighten workers’ loads, ultimately making them more productive and skilled at their jobs. The U.S. Navy recently bought two of the exoskeletons and plans to test them over the next six months to see how they might be used in an industrial situation.

Compared to something like the TALOS (Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit), a computerized exoskeleton that essentially wants to turn mere mortals into Iron Man, the FORTIS is fairly simple. “I would call it elegant,” says Miller. The anodized aluminum and carbon fiber skeleton weighs 30 pounds, and follows along the outside of a human’s body. It has joints in the parts of the body that would regularly have joints (ankle, knee, hip) and flexes from side to side at the waist. Miller says the skeleton was designed for complex environments—whoever is wearing it can climb stairs or a ladder, squat and generally move business as usual in the exoskeleton. Tools mount to the front of the FORTIS and that weight is directed through the joints in the hip and down to the floor, relieving stress on the entire body, including the feet and ankles. ...
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/navys-exos ... id-1542461
 
Wearable robot-skin could be warn by drones

Mechanical engineers have been using sensors, thread-like actuators and traditional sewing techniques to build robotic fabric that can reconfigure your clothing on the go. Well, that's one option. But the team of doctoral students at Purdue has initially developed it to act as a robot skin for our mechanical friends to help us explore alien landscapes, or for astronauts to don.

The team presented the material at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems held in Chicago this month, having followed up on a Nasa Early Career Faculty award announced in July for "active elastic skins for soft robotics".

For astronauts, this kind of future material would make space travel a more comfortable -- and safe -- affair. Elastic material would provide reinforcement and added strength at the joints, and protect against degradation from g-force, the team argues. If the second skin were fitted with sensors, the material could potentially alert the wearer to any changes in physiology that need immediate medical attention, to avoid illness, or to important but subtle changes in the local environment. On top of this, the lightweight material means suits could be shipped in larger quantities for long term space travellers that will need a change of outfit, or for their robot friends instructed to go out exploring.

Flexible space suits are vital for future long-term space travel, and a few are in development already. MIT aerospace engineer Dava Newman is building a BioSuit that uses nickel titanium shape-memory alloys to remain flexible while exerting the same pressures on the body as the Earth's atmosphere would. Meanwhile, a joint team from MIT, King's College London and the European Space Agency has been working on a Gravity Loading Countermeasure suit. As we prepare for longterm space travel and one-way missions to Mars, a space suit that can help counteract the negative impact of zero-gravity on the body (including bone density reduction) is paramount. ...

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/201 ... sor-robots
 
ReWalk Robotics, is a medical device company which has created ReWalk, an exoskeleton. The company team is focused on exoskeletons that can allow wheelchair-bound people to stand up and walk—not just in the rehab rooms of hospitals and clinics but in the real world of community and home.

Users would include those with spinal cord injuries resulting in complete or incomplete paralysis of the legs. Factors such as bone density and range of motion are evaluated during screening.

ReWalk's features and components include accelerometers that can detect when a user shifts weight and is ready to take a next step; battery-powered motorized legs; and the control of knee and hip movement via on-board computers and software.

On Wednesday, writing in IEEE Spectrum, Eliza Strickland reported on the ReWalk being alive and well in an ambitious real-world setting.

Robert Woo, an architect, showed how it works out of the lab and on to the streets of Manhattan. The paralyzed demonstrator had strapped on a pair of his robotic legs, stepped out of a hotel, to become part of Manhattan's ambitious, can't stop-now flow of pedestrians navigating a sidewalk in midtown.

http://phys.org/news/2015-07-exoskeleton-streets-york.html
 
New “Iron Man” Special Forces Exoskeleton Stops Bullets With Liquid Armor
CNN
IN BRIEF
We may have a new combat exoskeleton prototype in 2018. It will have body armor that makes use of a liquid that solidifies in milliseconds, and a tiny, powerful engine for recharging the suit's systems.

We’ve all seen what Iron Man can do in the movies, and it’s rather impressive—what with all the flying and absorbing bullets.

Ultimately, all of his abilities come from the incredible technology behind his suit. And it’s to this inspiration that Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is turning for their future combat exoskeleton prototypes, which are to be ready in 2018.

16-TALOS.jpg

An initial design of the TALOS exoskeleton. Credit: Army
LIQUID ARMOR
In 2013, SOCOM expanded their development of such a suit, which they call the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS). Navy SEALs or Special Forces would use these suits for special operations.

However, unlike the metallic, clunky suit of Iron Man, these military operators need to move with great mobility; therefore, the suits will be made with a “liquid body armor” that transforms into solid within milliseconds when a magnetic field or an electric current is applied through the material.

The technology is being developed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A Polish company, Moratex, is working on a similar kind of liquid body armor, using a non-Newtonian liquid called Shear-Thickening Fluid (STF). ...

http://futurism.com/2018-will-be-big-on-special-forces-exoskeleton-tech/
 
Tantalising, but still massively-aspirational.

The above cropped photograph is four years old (see https://engineeringevil.com/2013/10...n-man-body-armour-for-soldiers-of-the-future/).

It makes me wonder how much closer this has actually progressed over that time, towards a substantive product that was predicted back then for being available 15 months from now.

I'm assuming that the kinetic absorbtion capabilities are a function of this fluid-filled suit becoming pressurised (so, by description, this is using some form of hydraulic motor that increases the density of the aleady non-newtonian fluid, not in a circulatory sense analogous to a bloodstream, really it's more like a series of hollow static shaped vessels almost like layered lightweight sea-shells that possess no direct strength, but the fluid within them *when tensed* must become extremely dense and rigid.

I'm doubtful as to how (in a direct mass-per-unit-volume comparison, at a systems level) this can actually be significantly better than carbon composites, kevlar etc.

Thoughts @EnolaGaia @rynner2 other in-house physics protagonists?

Engineerable reality or military cosplay?
 
Paralysed man moves in mind-reading exoskeleton

Source: BBC News
Date: 4 October 2019

A man has been able to move all four of his paralysed limbs with a mind-controlled exoskeleton suit, French researchers report.

Thibault, 30, said taking his first steps in the suit felt like being the "first man on the Moon".

His movements, particularly walking, are far from perfect and the robo-suit is being used only in the lab.

But researchers say the approach could one day improve patients' quality of life.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-49907356
 
Let's hope it doesn't turn out like that film Upgrade. Seriously, though, an amazing advance, and life imitating art in a beneficent way.
 
It looks like a larval offshore oil drilling rig and walks like a drunken crab, but this is the Guinness record holder tetrapod exoskeleton. It's the result of a decade-long project by its inventor / maker / owner. Check out the video ...
12-foot-tall exoskeleton awarded Guinness record in Canada

A Vancouver man who spent more than 10 years designing a giant, four-legged robot has been awarded a Guinness World Record for the world's largest tetrapod exoskeleton.

Jonathan Tippett said his exoskeleton, which he dubbed Prosthesis, measures 12 feet, 11 inches tall; 16 feet, 18 inches long; and 18 feet, 1 inch wide.

The four-legged machine, which requires a pilot to operate, weighs in at 3,527 pounds.

Tippett said he constructed Prosthesis from Chromoly steel tubing, which is often used for aerospace and racing vehicles.

"The heart of the machine is a 96 vault 36 kWh lithium-ion battery pack, custom engineered," Tippett said. "That runs two AC electric motors which drive two hydraulic pumps and provide fluid flow to the hydraulic cylinders, which put out as much as 12,000 pounds of force each."

Tippett said he spent over a decade designing the exoskeleton and less than a year building the final design.
SOURCE (With Video): https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/0...uinness-record-in-Canada/3821580315213/?sl=12
 
This paralyzed British man has been certified for his second Guinness world record - for climbing stairs while wearing a prosthetic exoskeleton. He'd previously set the initial record for completing a marathon using robotic prostheses, and he hopes to break that record in 2022.
Man climbs 1,444 stairs while wearing exoskeleton, earns Guinness record

A British man who is paralyzed from the waist down broke his second Guinness World Record by climbing 1,444 stairs to the top of a London skyscraper while wearing a robotic exoskeleton.

ReWalk Robotics announced Simon Kindleysides, who lost the ability to walk under his own power due to an inoperable brain tumor, donned one of the company's robotic exoskeletons and climbed to the top of the 51-story Leadenhall Building in 6 hours and 16 minutes.

The company said Kindleysides' feat is a new Guinness World Record for climbing stairs while wearing a robotic exoskeleton.

Kindleysides previously earned a Guinness title in 2018, when he ... earned the title for fastest marathon distance in a robotic walking device. Kindleysides said he is planning to compete in this year's London Marathon and hopes to break his own record of 36 hours and 46 minutes.
FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2022/0...xoskeleton-Leadenhall-Building/5041648141686/
 
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