For the first time in the United States, someone has stood up and walked around in Cyberdyne’s powered exoskeleton. Somehow, thanks to divine intervention from Norri Kageki at GetRobo, that person was me. IEEE Spectrum was there too, getting it all on video:

After the jump, read all the juicy details… There’s a lot of ‘em.

This material is reposted from DVICE.com.

Cyberdyne’s HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) exoskeleton is designed to augment the strength of the wearer by a factor of up to ten. The suit senses when you want to move your legs, and then it moves them for you, supporting both its weight and yours as it walks around with you in it. Primarily, it’s designed for the elderly who may have problems walking, but it’s adaptable to many different tasks. HAL has been around for quite a while, but this is the first time it’s been to CES, and I’m the first person here in the US to be able to try it out in person.

The demo takes place after breakfast in a small and incredibly ugly conference room in the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. I meet with Takatoshi Kuno, the Sales Division Manager of Cyberdyne Inc., who has agreed to show me how HAL works. It’s just him; putting the exoskeleton on and getting it set up requires the help of one single guy who knows what he’s doing, no more.

Step one is to attach the sensors that HAL will use to tell when I want to move my legs. I drop my pants and they wire me up, carefully placing two electrodes on each of my thighs, two on my quads, and one on either side of my waist. The hip motors require an additional three electrodes per side, but from what I could understand, attaching those would have involved some fairly intimate groping, and Kuno-san didn’t seem so inclined (not that I blame him).

Once the electrodes are attached, I get dressed again, and go over to a couple chairs. The suit is splayed out across them, looking like some sort of dead robot, which I guess is exactly what it was. I’m starting to get kinda freaked out, realizing that I’m about to be strapped into a device that’s going to have total control over my lower body. I mean, what if it decides to suddenly rebel against its masters and run for it with me inside?

To put the suit on, I sit down on the chairs in between its legs. The electrodes get attached to wiring on the suit, I’m velcroed in, and a battery pack is snapped on to the suit at the small of my back. Foot support comes from special shoes that are attached to the suit, and they’re made for Japanese people, meaning that they’re about nine sizes too small for my size 13 feet. I curl my toes, suck it up, and make it work anyway. HAL connects wirelessly to a laptop, and it begins to boot, a process which takes 40 seconds or so. At this point, not knowing what to expect, I’m starting to hyperventilate.

The boot process finishes, at which point the suit requires some calibration. There are controls on the hips to adjust the power going to the motors, and after fiddling with them for a minute, Kuno-san asks me to try to extend my leg. As I tense my leg muscles, I can hear and then feel HAL’s motors kick in with a high tech electric whine, and my leg slowly rises off the floor and extends itself as I watch it. It’s pretty freaking cool. All I’m doing is thinking about moving my leg to the point where my muscles start to kick in, and then the suit picks up on that and does all the work.

At this point, I’m busy staring at my leg and giggling like an idiot. My leg is fully extended out in front of me, something that gets tiring pretty quickly (try it). I’m not getting tired, because my muscles aren’t doing any work: it’s all the suit. Lowering my leg is as easy as raising it; I just let my quad relax and my calf starts to tense, and the suit slowly returns my leg to where it was.

Kuno-san pushes some buttons on the suit’s hip controls, gives me a little smile, and tells me to try it again. I start to tense my muscles and then WHAM! My leg rockets straight out in front of me in what feels like about a millisecond. This is when it really hits me: I’m actually wearing a powered exoskeleton, and it’s entirely possible that at this moment, I have the strongest legs on the entire planet.

Kuno-san turns the suit down again to a more reasonable level, since I’m now supposed to try to get up and walk. I get a frame-thing to hang on to while I try to stand, which comes in handy since my first attempt is a failure. HAL is doing all of the muscle work which throws my balance way off, and it takes some practice to know what to expect. I make it on attempt number two, and the suit locks its joints to keep me upright. Sitting down is easy, since the suit kicks in to support as much of my body weight as possible, gently depositing my butt in the chair. I practice this routine a couple times, and then it’s time to walk.

From a standing position, walking just involves thinking ‘walk’ up to the point where your leg muscles start to do their thing, and then the suit figures out what you want and moves your legs accordingly. At first, I don’t really get this, and I try to move my legs by myself. It’s not intentional, but my brain simply isn’t accustomed to having something else do my walking for me. As it turns out, the best way to walk in HAL seems to be to just be super lazy and rely completely on the suit to take over for as many of your muscles as it possibly can.

This is not to say that HAL is just some mindless leg moving machine. In fact, it’s the opposite. HAL pays close attention to your muscle movements and can actually sense how much muscle you’re planning to apply, and it calculates how much power to add and moves its motors before your muscles move on their own. This means that that you still have complete control over when you take a step, where you take a step, and the length and height of your stride. When you get the hang of it, which took me barely five minutes, it’s really just like walking, except using robot muscles instead of your own.

After just a minute or two of walking, Kuno-san leads me over to some stairs, and up I go. Stairs involve balancing on one leg, which is a bit challenging, especially without HAL’s hip joints active. The suit can’t do your balancing for you completely, but it does help: it has accelerometers in it which constantly calculate your center of gravity, and the suit will do what it can to keep you stable. The especially cool thing about going up stairs is that I can really feel the power behind the suit, even with it turned down. To get from one stair to the next I have to lift my entire body weight with one leg, and HAL does this without the least hesitation. As it turns out, I’m using HAL with it set on level one, and it goes all the way up to level four.

After a few trips up and down the stairs and some more walking around, I’m feeling totally comfortable in HAL. The suit supports its own weight, so it effectively weighs nothing when you have it on, and when you stop trying to walk with your legs and let the suit move them for you, the entire experience becomes virtually seamless. And then just when I’m starting to relax, it’s time to sit down and take the suit off. I’m incredibly sad as HAL powers down and returns to its limp, dead robot look… I was only in it for ten minutes, but it already feels a little bit like a part of me.

I get up to thank Kuno-san and nearly fall over as my muscles completely fail to wake up from that lazy state that worked with the suit. Kuno-san laughs and says that this is normal, and that my balance will come right back, and (thankfully) it does.

The upper half of HAL, which is still in development, does the same basic thing except for your arms in addition to your legs. The torso enables humans to lift up to ten times what they would normally be able to, and is designed to make life easier for farm and factory workers and other people who have to lift heavy things for a living.

HAL is currently for rent in Japan for about $1,500 per month, which is shockingly reasonable. I mean, how much would you pay to be able to put on a suit that makes you ten times as strong as you are now? You’d quite literally be a cyborg superhero. It’s not comic books, it’s not movies, this thing exists and it works, I can personally attest to that. And as with any new technology, from here on the price is going to go down while the availability goes up, so there’s a real possibility that something like HAL may make it out of industrial and medical settings and just be something that you can go rent at your local hardware store when you have yard work to do or furniture to move or a bank to rob. It may sound crazy, but I promise you, it’s not.

Cybernetic exoskeletons, man. They’re getting real. Welcome to the future.

Special thanks to Norri Kageki at GetRobo and Takatoshi Kuno at Cyberdyne for making this happen, and to Joshua Romero, Joe Calamia, and Erico Guizzo at IEEE for getting it all on tape.

[ Cyberdyne ]

More coming soon, but it was incredible.

The woman in this picture is Amanda Boxtel, who has had a T11/12 spinal injury for 18 years. She’s a paraplegic, but she’s now able to walk with the aid of eLEGS, a robotic exoskeleton system from Berkeley Bionics. You probably remember Berkeley Bionics from their cargo-carrying exoskeleton, HULC, which they’ve since licensed to Lockheed Martin for production for the military. eLEGS is largely based on HULC, except designed for (eventual) home use. The system is relatively light at 45 pounds, and you strap into it by yourself while sitting down. After only a few hours of practice, paraplegics are able to use eLEGS to stand up and walk:

More, after the jump.

eLEGS is very efficient, and allows for an entire day of walking without needing to be recharged. It’s also extremely quiet, which is very important for a device that is designed to allow you to move around and interact with people in public and social situations.

I made a point of asking how exactly the interface between the user and the system works, and was told that it was proprietary, “but nice try.” In general, however, it appears as though eLEGS senses arm movements through ‘smart crutches’ (it also looks like there’s some kind of sensor attached to each upper arm), and as the user moves one crutch forward, eLEGS moves the opposite leg. However, to some extent eLEGS learns and adapts to each user, so there must be some other stuff going on under the hood.

eLEGS will be available next July to a select group of rehab centers, but from the beginning, eLEGS was designed for people to take home and use by themselves. By 2013, eLEGS should be available for purchase for something in the low six figures, although the eventual target price is something in the neighborhood of $50k, which is equivalent to a top of the line wheelchair.

I especially liked what Amanda says at the end of the video:

“This is not a wave of the future. The eLEGS is right now. I don’t have to be hopeful… This is reality.”

It’s pretty awesome to realize how true that is.

[ Berkeley Bionics ]

Kevin Warwick was arguably* the world’s first cyborg in 1998 when he got an RFID chip implanted into his arm that allowed him to interact with computer systems using a part of his body. In this interview, he talks about the present and future of cybernetics.

The first part of the interview is pretty tame (except for the big about the brain cell controlled robots, which is very interesting), but then Kevin starts talking about how he had his nervous system hooked up to his wife’s nervous system and things get a little freaky. Good stuff.

[ Motherboard ] VIA [ BB ]

*If you choose to define a cyborg as a person who has some form of technology integrated into their bodies to enable them to interact with the world in a different way, as opposed to (and this may be more generalized) a human with electronic enhancements, in which case the first person with a pacemaker (a guy named Arne Larsson) might have been the first cyborg back in 1958.

It’s been 2 years since we last checked out a robot arm controlled by a monkey brain. That arm (from back in 2008) had only four degrees of freedom, and this one is a whopping seven, but that doesn’t seem to phase the monkey much, as it deftly uses brain control to grasp a knob with the arm and receive a tasty reward.

At this point, the monkey is relying on two brain implants (in the arm and hand areas of its motor cortex) to interpret nerve impulses and use them to control the arm. The fantasy is (as least, as this technology applies to people with disabilities) is to make the controller non-invasive, and some of the technology is sort of there. Sort of. But perhaps more importantly, this experiment shows just how capable and adaptable a brain is, and the potential is very exciting. Or at least, my brain is excited… My body, on the other hand, is getting a little worried about its potential obsolescence.

[ MotorLab ] VIA [ IEEE ]

The future of robotics is here. It’s **drum roll** cockroaches? Texas A&M University’s Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute (say that 10 times fast!) is developing technology that allows cockroaches to be controlled via a tiny chip on a cockroach’s back that sends electrical signals to make the roach move. “It’s like a cattle prod for cockroaches,” says William Charlton, an associate professor at Texas A&M.

But why cockroaches? Well, the same chip that communicates remotely with a computer to prod the roach has several types of radiation sensor, meaning that it can detect whether conditions in a given area are safe for humans.

“Cockroaches really are the perfect medium for this,” says William Charlton, an associate professor of nuclear engineering at the university and a principal investigator on the project. “They can go for extraordinarily long periods of time without food. They exist on every continent except Antarctica. They’re very radiation resistant, and they can carry extremely large amounts of weight compared to their body mass.”

If Charlton gets his way, we’ll have mini-armies of 20 or so roaches surveying areas as large as one square kilometer, all controlled by remote operators, all reporting data about chemical conditions in the area.

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords

It may look almost cartoonish in proportion, but the picture above is the real deal. How long till we see “Control Your Own Cockroach” kits for the kids?

[ NDIA ] VIA [ Wired ]

From the folks at RSLSteeper in the UK comes BeBionic, “The next generation of fully articulated myo-electric hands.” Being myoelectric means that these hands can be controlled by electrical signals from the human brain. Not only can these bionic digits produce still art straight out of a zombie flick, they’re actually quite… dare I say… handy? “Complete with a range of naturally compliant grip patterns that provide repeatable accuracy, our powerful new hands combine innovative technology with life-like appearance.” In other words these things are AALLIIIVVVEEEEE… or at least pretty darn close to it. RSLSteeper has also released a nifty teaser video showing off just how accurate these things are:

Tell me those things don’t look awesome!

Now, maybe I shouldn’t be talking, seeing as I’ve made some pretty destructive robots, but as cool as these bionic hands look, I always find robots that are capable of actually hurting someone (read: Kung-Fu grip) the slightest bit creepy, and this is no exception. I mean, if we’ve learned anything from The Addams Family, it’s that hands with a mind of their own can only mean bad news.

At the same time, I do have to applaud RSLSteeper- if the BeBionic hands are as nimble as the video demonstrates, then they could have some very important applications, both in helping amputees, and in making more life-like androids.

What’s your take? Handy, or creepy?

[ BeBionic ] VIA [ Engadget ]

Even if you’ve got a micro air vehicle that provides its own power for thrust, like a Rhinoceros beetle with an implanted optical lobe stimulation controller, you still need power for the communication system itself. One ideal solution is to try and harvest electricity from the insect, but a more realistic approach (at the moment) might be a dependable long-life battery, and nothing is more dependable and long-life and potentially dangerous than a nuclear battery.

Don’t worry, it’s not at all dangerous. The nuclear battery in question is powered by nickel-63, a “mildly radioactive” isotope with a half-life of about 12 years, meaning that the battery could easily provide power for a decade or two or even as long as a century. Funded by DARPA and developed at Cornell, the battery generates enough power to emit a high-power RF communication pulse once every 3 minutes or so. Here’s how it works:

The RFID transmitter converts the energy of radioactive decay into mechanical movement in a MEMS device. A tiny silicon and piezoelectric cantilever, 40 micrometers thick and 4 to 8 millimeters long, is suspended on a chip over the radioactive thin film like a diving board over a pool. Electrons ejected from the radioisotope accumulate on the cantilever, giving it a negative charge. Now the cantilever is attracted to the (relatively) positive Ni-63 thin film and begins to bend toward it. As soon as it bends enough to touch the Ni-63, the charges jump back onto the thin film, and the cantilever, freed of the accreted electrons, springs back to its starting position. The power is generated when the cantilever snaps back to its original position. It continues this way until the isotope’s radioactivity is depleted.

The entire system, which is just a prototype and has not been optimized for either size or power output, is just 1 square centimeter in size. Besides nuclear powered remote control cyborg insects, researchers suggest that the batteries could be used in a variety of long-term sensing and monitoring applications.

VIA [ IEEE ]

Author (and screenwriter) and robot professional Daniel Wilson got a chance to test out the HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier) exoskeleton while filming a show for the History Channel. He wrote an article about the experience for Gizmodo, a few bits of which I’ve excerpted here for you:

My first impression: The straps are too big. The HULC was built with military money and it is designed to fit army guys. And soldiers have big thighs, apparently. I yank the Velcro straps as tight as possible, then strap my shoes into its open-toed boots. I shrug on the backpack and clasp the chest strap. I am now wearing an exoskeleton. Turned off, the device is heavy; it’s like wearing a scuba tank on dry land. But once the researchers switch it on, HULC stands up on its own, with me inside.

Like a video game that breaks the human face down into just a few polygons, my new exo-walk consists of just a few gross movements. Knee lift, foot out, foot down. Repeat. It lacks the fluidity of my normal walk, but I don’t fall. And oh yeah, every movement is accompanied by the loud whine of electric motors. Each step sounds like reeee (that’s the motor) followed by ker-thump, as my foot touches down.

After the practice run, it’s time to hit the hallway. I immediately notice that my gait is becoming more fluid. I can even balance on one leg. This is because the machine is learning to anticipate my every move. The HULC is no dumb brute. It is constantly sensing the force of my movements and forming a model of how I walk. It’s getting to know me, exoskeleton-style.

Read the whole thing over at Gizmodo.

[ Gizmodo ]
[ HULC ]

DEKA’s prosthetic robot arm is commonly referred to as the “Luke” arm, but this new robotic hand may be more appropriate for that title, at least as far as the movie goes. Not only is this artificial hand, called the SmartHand, controlled directly by the brain (as opposed to actuated by muscle movements), but it provides some degree of feedback to the nerves of the user, including pressure and even texture (!). So this guy can actually feel things through the robot hand. It’s a neural interface. Like in Star Trek. Welcome to the future, people.

[ Press Release (Translated) ]
[ BBC ] VIA [ Communist Robot ]