EXOSKELETON AND OTHER HUMAN AUGMENTATIONS

Paurush Kumar

Human enhancements are no longer science fiction but a reality, which will soon sprout in our life. Innovation has stimulated the conversion of our dreams into a mixed reality. Inspired by movies like Iron man and Edge of Tomorrow, we have developed exo-suits. These exo-suits can’t make us superhumans or cyborgs but will surely increase our calibre to do daily tasks.

Understanding Augmentation

Augmentation is an addition of external inputs to increase quality or efficiency. New options for human augmentation seem to be empowering and offering improvements to human health and quality of life. The market is filled with ideas relating to the following augmentations: -

Prosthetics
Body to Machine interface (teleoperations)
Exo-suits
Gene-editing

The development of prosthetics has taken a new step due to nanotechnology, which leads to miniaturisation of motors and components in the mechanical limb. This has led amputees to lead a near normal life. Whereas, earlier the prosthetics were available only as a static model. This gap is also being filled with the usage of exoskeleton as it is providing an extra hand by increasing strength, balance and efficiency of human body.

Wearable Robotics: Exoskeleton

Exoskeletons are the outer covering on any organism that provides external strength to protect and balance the body. Natural exoskeleton has not been not gifted to humans but robotics combined with Nano technology have given us a mobile machine with frameworks fitted with motorized "muscles" that can multiply the wearers’ strength far beyond that of normal humans and enhance motion or muscle capability.

Significant developments in Products

Myo armband is a gesture recognition-based device which links the human body up with the outside sources of information, either visual or text-based. It reads the variation and flex in muscles to give output to mechanical limbs.

The ReWalk exoskeleton is designed to enable those with lower limb disabilities to walk upright with the aid of crutches.

The Hulc is a hydraulic exoskeleton enabling soldiers to carry weights of around 90kg in the field.

Governments could soon start outfitting fire-fighters, EMS, and disaster personnel, combat troops and logistics specialists with protective exoskeletons.

Effects on other Sectors

The exoskeletons are still being developed and therefore are very costly but that doesn’t dilute the massive attention it gets from technophiles. With applications split across healthcare, heavy industry and the military, exoskeletons have already proved their worth for a variety of uses and are likely to become more commonplace as the technology drops in price.

Growth in INDIA

Exoskeleton leader ReWalk Robotics has partnered with Saimed Innovations, a leading medical technologies provider, to distribute the ReWalk exoskeleton systems in Northern India. This agreement marks a milestone for exoskeleton technology and the spinal cord injury community, as ReWalk becomes the first company to provide the robotics devices in India.

The leading names from INDIA in the market are KUKA Robotics, Sastra Robotics, GreyOrange, Systemantics.

Check the following links to learn some more interesting things:

1.Tele-operations https://web.stanford.edu/class/me328/lectures/lecture3-teleoperation.pdf

2. Upcoming Human Body modifications https://bigthink.com/articles/10-human-body-modifications-you-can-expect-in-the-next-decade