Posts Tagged ‘Exoskeleton’

Rex, Robot Legs form New Zealand Lets Paraplegic Walk

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
Rex Robotic Exoskeleton

Rex Robotic Exoskeleton

Rex Bionics, a New Zealand company has developed a set of robotic legs that enables paraplegics to walk again. With the Rex robotic exoskeleton paraplegic can walk on hard surfaces, turn, go up the starts and more…for a 150 000 $ price-tag.

Although the concept is interesting, the kiwis will need to drop the price a little (or preferably a lot) and improve the motion speed which is rather slow at the moment. Regardless, we are not in a position to judge how much walking  would cost for a disabled person (even at low speeds).

The video below illustrates Rex capabilities:

Via Singularity Hub.

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    Posted in Medical | 2 Comments »

    Motion Capture Exoskeleton, Johnny 5 Style

    Monday, June 28th, 2010

    Some time ago, the RobotShop team decided to build a telepresence system. Usually, these kinds of systems are sadly limited to a web-cam and a screen on wheels, and are simply a glorified videophone. This is not the case at RobotShop since we love robots and are all for crazy projects. This is why, a full motion controlled system was put together in order to provide a truly immersive experience to the user. This is very similar to the Justin control haptic suit by DLR featured in the past days, but a few tens of millions of dollars cheaper.

    The team did this mainly inspired by one of the coolest robots of all Hollywood history: Johnny 5 (from the Short Circuit movie).

    Johnny 5

    Johnny 5

    The Lynxmotion Johnny 5 robotic platform was used, and a motion-capture exoskeleton was put together using mainly potentiometers and wooden sticks. The video below shows further details about the project, its motivations and the end result.

    For the reader’s convenience, we have transcribed the list of materials used during the construction featured at the end of the video:

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      Posted in Fun, Humanoids, Robotic Exoskeleton, RobotShop, Telepresence | No Comments »