Cyborg Friday: Berkeley Bionics Exoskeleton Now Available For Pre-Order
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Friday, 30 of May , 2008 at 3:52 am
It may not be quite as slick looking (or as sinister) as the Cyberdyne exoskeleton, but Berkeley Bionics’ lower body exoskeleton is firmly off the drawing board and into the prototype stage, and you can preorder one for yourself to help kick your status as a 98 pound weakling. The HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier) is able to take up to 200 pounds of load off of your back, augmenting your muscle movements so that you feel as though you’re not carrying anything at all. If you want to go anywhere, it’s still going to take some work to move that extra mass, but the HULC will also help to decrease the metabolic cost of moving a load by 10-15%, which means that you can move more heavier stuff farther.
There aren’t any more details on the Berkeley Bionics website (no price, for example) and the promo video looks like the target users are military rather than civilian. It could be that Berkeley Bionics is just looking to sell some prototype HULC systems to raise a little bit of money, but who cares, now is your big chance to start working on that superhero (or supervillain) cyborg suit you’ve been fantasizing about.
[ Berkeley Bionics ] VIA [ IEEE ]
Comments (1)
Category: Consumer, Cybernetics
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Comment by Aideshymayday
Made Saturday, 31 of January , 2009 at 1:39 am
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