Retail giant Lowe has joined hands with Virginia Tech to develop a lift-assist technology in the form of a futuristic exosuit. Intended to offer employees extra support while moving products around in the company’s 1,800 or so stores, the powerful yet lightweight contraption is currently being trialed at Lowe’s Christiansburg, VA outlet. (more…)
If you are an Iron Man fanatic like us, you must have spent countless hours admiring the armors Tony Stark has donned during his superhero career. Not only are these suits incredibly futuristic and versatile, they seem to exude power and invincibility. To celebrate the upcoming 'Stark Week' (August 3 - 7), the brilliant minds at…
In recent years, superhero movies have made exoskeletons more fashionable than a three-piece suit. That is not all, however. Over the years, the technology has made its way from the realm of science fiction to reality, thanks to incredibly futuristic applications in fields as varied as military, medicine and others. No wonder then that the…
Whenever we come to the field of bionics, science and technological advancements have proven the dictum 'small is better'. Going along those lines, a group of Australian researchers have contrived an implantable device which has a size of a tiny paper-clip. But beyond its diminutive dimensions, the contrivance for all intents-and-purposes is a 'bionic spinal…
Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is a serious neuromuscular disease, affecting approximately 1 in 3,600 boys, which often results in severe muscle degeneration and in some cases, premature death. Caused by mutation of a specific X-linked gene, the disorder is usually associated with progressive muscle weakness and even loss of muscle mass, gradually leading to a…
A few days ago, we talked about the Robo-Mate exoskeleton developed by Fraunhofer IAO research institute for industrial usages. Well it seems, another company has kept up with such grand notions of human-synthetic fusion in hard factory conditions. We are talking about electronic giant Panasonic, and how their subsidiary company ActiveLink has been developing an…
With recent advancements in technology, the distinction between science and science fiction is slowly, yet steadily, disappearing. As a child, mechanical engineer Dan Baechle fell in love with the 1986 sci-fi classic, Aliens. Inspired by the movie’s Caterpillar Power Loader, Baechle has created an incredibly innovative mechatronic arm exoskeleton, which he calls the MAXFAS. Designed…
In spite of recent advances in development of heavy-weight countering robots, one of the startling statistical figures pertain to how an average human production worker lifts up to a whopping 10 metric tons of material on a daily (workday) basis. Unsurprisingly, one of the perturbing effects of such load-carrying activities relates to how 44 million…