humanexoskeletons

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This is a general discussion and mostly just has names that might be neat to look into further.

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Biological discussion of literal exoskeletons aside, this is the article’s cool part:

“Although having real exoskeletons wouldn't be prudent for humans, some folks believe there are reasons for fashioning a wearable variety. Humans aren't the swiftest creatures on Earth, and most of us are limited in the amount of weight that we can pick up and carry.

These weaknesses can be fatal on the battlefield, and that's why the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investing $50 million to develop an exoskeleton suit for ground troops. This wearable robotic system could give soldiers the ability to run faster, carry heavier weapons and leap over large obstacles. These exoskeletal machines could be equipped with sensors and global positioning system (GPS) receivers. Soldiers could use this technology to obtain information about the terrain they're crossing and how to navigate their way to specific locations. DARPA is also developing computerized fabrics that could be used with the exoskeletons to monitor heart and breathing rates.”

TL;DR: the article is old (2006), but afaik the US military is still one of the biggest financial supporters of this kind of research in the US, and this segment summarizes why.

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Rhodey + his leg braces

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Tl;dr: this is a bloomberg article discussing the pros of using human exos in automobile factories, particularly focusing on this in China.

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Automobile Factories and Exos

Automobile factories are v interested in devices that can assist their employees because they’ve reached the limits of how much can be automated without humans involved, and now they’re looking for ways to make the humans that have to be involved more productive and less likely to get wear and tear.

On the cynical side: if they can get more productivity out of people by making them capable of lifting more, then the company’s profits increase. (This increase is particularly appealing when you know that there’s no inherent promise of employee salaries having to increase proportionally to their productivity. Also, a reduction of wear and tear on the employee is at least partly aimed at trying to reduce the amounts of legal settlements companies have to live with after their employees retire with repetitive motion injuries.

On the other side of this coin: people getting less injured isn’t a bad thing, and more productivity by itself isn’t a bad thing. The failure of employers be responsible stewards and fulfill the promise of automation isn’t a failure of the technology itself, but more a human issue that needs person-to-person solutions.

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This is an interesting discussion on industrial exoskeletons as they are now, how emerging ways to evaluate them are taking shape, and what some general findings are with these.

Punchline: some people find them useful, some don’t, and basically the tech isn’t perfect yet. A lot of the most publicly available info is direct from the people trying to sell the exoskeletons, and this doesn’t always reflect the actual reality of what using the devices is like.

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My favorite comment here is from a guy who says he’s working with Keahni Seymour, and had some tips: 

-use speargum=smoother run -don't use usual steel. Keashis boots are made of carbon and t6 alloy aluminium. I am on a budget, too, so I used wood(old bed). -make the tips of the shoes bent, so you run "on your toes" -best to start from are a pair of used inline-skates

He said he would post his own instructable later, but the comment is five years old, so either he posted it elsewhere or something happened.

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“The evolution of the Bionic Boot: Prototypes, 2005-2014 (Keahi Seymour)”

(Picture and caption taken from this article.)

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There was another article I posted earlier that talked about the legal/financial issues facing Ekso Bionics when they didn’t have a giant corporate structure helping them stay afloat. This looks like a story with the same flavor.

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Basically these look like an upgrade to the classic jumping stilts! Which is pretty neat.

Now I want to know what kind of studies there are comparing these together, because there’s some obvious differences (leaf spring VS--elastic? Those are essentially rubber cables, right?), and I’m curious if the only difference is the material used for the elasticity. We can also see a linkage here, but does that really help with the speed? And if it does, how? Being able to kick off from the ground affects the running motion, but those boots don’t make it look like the ankle can contribute to the running process the way it naturally would.

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What is the most impressive exoskeleton you've seen to date?

This reply is late because the short answer is ‘I’m out of the loop and don’t know what the latest and greatest is’, and ‘from what I remember when I was paying more attention, none of them were very convincing to me as being impressive beyond in a basic sense.’

Exoskeleton presentations or advertisements usually leave me distracted with thoughts like ‘oh they really green-screen’d the heck out of this video’s background’, and ‘this motion doesn’t look natural at all, is this because they’re trying to dramatize using it or because that’s just what it looks like?’, and ‘ok but what was it actually like to make and wear it?’

From an engineering perspective, I’ll appreciate the depth of things that go into deciding whether to heavily actuate EVERYTHING (looking at you, Body Extender and your twenty DOF) or whether to strip everything down to minimalism and actively actuate what seems from afar like a single DOF (*Points at eyes, points at Ekso*). The designers have to weigh the fact that every single thing to be controlled has to be able to respond immediately, while also accounting for the fact that human motion is whack and difficult to accommodate. Then you get into the background of people trying to figure out how to get feedback from the body into these things, combined with how humans are squishy and wobbly and all different sizes…

As a concept, my favorite robot/exo design trend is stuff that uses mechanical strategies to take care of as many of these things as possible. What I mean is a trend I saw a while back in robotic hand design, where instead of controlling each DOF people were starting to experiment with how to underactuate things, and how to use robo-tendons and synergy to get complicated results with very little effort. I think there’s definitely space for leaning harder into mechanical solutions, since there’s a crapton of new materials and minor actions that computers could take that would go much further than old clockwork exoskeletons used to.

How about yourself? Do you have any favorites, or any trends you’ve seen that raise some designs above others?

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An interesting description of the financial and legal issues that companies face without giant corporate entities to defend them.

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Guardian XO exoskeleton robot can lift 200 pounds, Delta airlines trialing them this year https://ift.tt/37GRpJV

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This is seriously cool!! It has an overview of neat things that Exoskeletons could do, along with a list of the issues the industry is facing, as well as a lot of places where it’s really not proving itself well.

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1. there is a crapton of lens flare

2. I'm 60% sure the background is a green screen

3. It seems risky to depend completely on side to side compression to lift things like boxes. The extra force needed to do this instead of hooking something under a surface seems like it would work against whatever benefits you get from whatever assistance the machine has