The Engineer magazine reports on direct brain interfaces for controlling prosthetics and wheelchairs (is a wheel chair a type of prosthetic or not?).
In the longer term, a future adaptive asynchronous BCI system could have applications in the gaming or entertainment industry or could even be used to control vehicles, claimed Roberts.
Several third parties, ranging from the military to Playstation, have shown interest in the work, but for the time being the researchers’ focus remains firmly fixed on the medical applications of the technology.
And the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers mag Spectrum has a great review of the current state of exoskeletons.
Today, in Japan and the United States, engineers are finally putting some practical exoskeletons through their paces outside of laboratories. But don’t look for these remarkable new systems to bust bricks or spew lightning. The very first commercially available exoskeleton, scheduled to hit the market in Japan next month, is designed to help elderly and disabled people walk, climb stairs, and carry things around. Built by Cyberdyne Inc., in Tsukuba, Japan, this exoskeleton, called HAL-5, will cost about 1.5 million yen (around US $13 800)
Isn’t it jinxing it a bit to call a technology product that you’re going to wrap a human being in after a murderous (or misguided) fictional AI. Let alone their company after another fictional, genocidal, robot company. Perhaps these Japanese engineers dont watch scifi, or more likley have a great sense of irony.
Japan, with almost half the world’s nearly 1 million industrial robots, is likely to be the place where adoption of exoskeletons will first take hold. The country’s rapidly aging population—one in four Japanese will be 65 or older by 2015—and its ambivalence toward admitting foreign laborers have created a shortage of caregivers, and some believe robotic-aided nursing care could be the solution.
Perhaps they’ve also watched Roujin Z.
The exoskeleton has also undergone a major face-lift. It now incorporates smaller dc motor actuators, which are positioned at the shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees. This improvement, along with the addition of the plastic casing that covers and strengthens the frame, means the new suit has shed the knobby, bare-bones look that characterized HAL-3 in favor of a sleek appearance resembling outfits seen on “Star Trek.”
