Exoskeletons in the work place/Mind controlled exos

[tronic44 3,628]

Looks like the new cod might not be as far in the future as we thought, i know they're different types of exoskeletons but it's quiet interesting to see that, it being implemented into the work place, is only just around the corner.

 

 

 

 

Workers building the world’s biggest ships could soon don robotic exoskeletons to lug around 100-kilogram hunks of metal as if they’re nothing

AT A sprawling shipyard in South Korea, workers dressed in wearable robotics were hefting large hunks of metal, pipes and other objects as if they were nothing.

 

It was all part of a test last year by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, at their facility in Okpo-dong. The company, one of the largest shipbuilders in the world, wants to take production to the next level by outfitting staff with robot exoskeletons that give them superhuman strength.

Gilwhoan Chu, the lead engineer for the firm's research and development arm, says the pilot showed that the exoskeleton does help workers perform their tasks. His team is working to improve the prototypes so that they can go into regular use in the shipyard, where robots already run a large portion of ahugely complex assembly system.

 

The exoskeleton fits anyone between 160 and 185 centimetres tall. Workers do not feel the weight of its 28-kilogram frame of carbon, aluminium alloy and steel, as the suit supports itself and is engineered to follow the wearer's movements. With a 3-hour battery life, the exoskeleton allows users to walk at a normal pace and, in its prototype form, it can lift objects with a mass of up to 30 kilograms.

To don the exoskeleton, workers start by strapping their feet on to foot pads at the base of the robot. Padded straps at the thigh, waist and across the chest connect the user to the suit, allowing the robot to move with their bodies as it bears loads for them. A system of hydraulic joints and electric motors running up the outside of the legs links to a backpack, which powers and controls the rig.

 

Frames designed for individual tasks can be attached to the backpack, with some arcing over a person's head like a small crane. As well as boosting raw lifting ability, the suit helps workers manipulate heavy components precisely: it takes most of the weight, so the user is effectively handling light objects.

Chu says worker feedback from the trial has been mostly positive. Testers were pleased that the exoskeleton let them lift heavy objects repeatedly without strain, but everyone also wanted it to move faster and be able to cope with heavier loads. Chu is working on it. "Our current research target of the lifting capacity is about 100 kilograms," he says.

 

The world's top three shipbuilding firms are South Korean – Daewoo, Hyundai Heavy Industries and Samsung Heavy Industries – and their shipyards are already renowned for their level of automation. In a study of the firms' facilities in 2012, US Navy personnel found that five out of the six yards they visited used robots in some capacity. At one shipyard, robots did 68 per cent of all welding as well as carrying out jobs from cutting and grinding steel to polishing freshly assembled hulls, with minimal human oversight.

 

"At the time, most of the yards we toured were significantly more advanced in robotic welding than the US yards performing naval ship construction, and had been for a long time," Gene Mitchell, the retired US Navy officer who led the research told New Scientist.

All this automation goes into building truly gargantuan vessels. Daewoo has a $1.9 billion contract from shipping giant Maersk to build 10 55,000-tonne container ships. Each 400 metres in length, with space for 18,000 containers, they will be the largest of their kind ever built.

As the industry grows, so too will the need for automation, including robotic suits of the kind Daewoo is experimenting with. The prototypes still have several important kinks to be worked out, though. In tests, workers had a hard time negotiating sloping or slippery surfaces. And the prototypes cannot yet cope with twisting motions, so workers making turns while carrying heavy objects could tire out easily.

Still, Chu is committed. "We've been developing and applying robots and automation in shipbuilding for more than a decade," he says. And if he has his way, humans will soon be effortlessly wielding ship parts that weigh more than they do.

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329803.900-robotic-suit-gives-shipyard-workers-super-strength.html#.U99hU_ldV14

[J4MES OX4D 9,810]

Nice find Rich!

[tronic44 3,628]

Wow and mind controlled exoskeleton for disabled people, this is incredible!

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23640-mindcontrolled-exoskeleton-lets-paralysed-people-walk.html#.U-Csc_ldV14

 

TWO years ago, Antonio Melillo was in a car crash that completely severed his spinal cord. He has not been able to move or feel his legs since. And yet here I am, in a lab at the Santa Lucia Foundation hospital in Rome, Italy, watching him walk.

Melillo is one of the first people with lower limb paralysis to try outMindWalker – the world's first exoskeleton that aims to enable paralysed and locked-in people to walk using only their mind.

Five people have been involved in the clinical trial of MindWalker over the past eight weeks. The trial culminates this week with a review by the European Commission, which funded the work; the project has been carried out by a consortium of several major universities and companies.

It's the end of a three-year development period for the project, which has three main elements. There is the exoskeleton itself, a contraption that holds a person's body weight and moves their legs when instructed. People learn how to use it in the second element: a virtual-reality environment. And then there's the mind-reading component.

Over in the corner of the lab, Thomas Hoellinger of the Free University of Brussels (ULB) in Belgium is wearing an EEG cap, which measures electrical activity at various points across his scalp. There are several ways he can use it to control the exoskeleton through thought alone – at the moment, the most promising involves wearing a pair of glasses with flickering diodes attached to each lens.

 

Each set of diodes flashes at a different frequency in the wearer's peripheral vision. The light is processed by an area of the brain called the occipital cortex. Measurements from this part of the brain can detect whether Hoellinger is concentrating on the left diode or the right. He shows me how concentrating on the left starts the exoskeleton walking, while concentrating on the right stops it. All this happens in under a second.

Melillo isn't wearing the cap right now, because the team has hit a snag. When the exoskeleton moves, its motors induce electrical noise in the EEG signal, making the readings unreliable.

So instead of mind control, Melillo is walking by moving his upper body. As he leans left, a pressure sensor just above his buttock registers the movement and moves the opposite leg of the exoskeleton. He repeats the process on the other side to begin walking. "It's great, such an amazing sensation," he says. "Not just walking but even being able to stand upright."

Two days after my visit, the team identified flickering frequencies that are less affected by the mechanical noise and filmed a researcher controlling the exoskeleton with his mind alone.

The team plans to spend another five years refining MindWalker with an eye towards building a commercial product. "We're going to make it more lightweight and smooth out the movements," says Jeremi Gancet of Space Application Services in Zaventem, Belgium, a deputy coordinator on the project, "and possibly even incorporate it all into a pair of pants to make it a little less 'Robocop'."

They also want to ditch the glasses with the flashing diodes. A team led byGuy Chéron at ULB has identified the brain activity that corresponds with the intention of walking. This activity occurs about a second before you actually move and can be identified by EEG signals from the motor cortex. The team can even distinguish between the intention to walk quickly or slowly.

The creation of an algorithm that can recognise these signals reliably opens up the tantalising possibility that much more intuitive walking control could be given both to people who are paralysed and to those who are completely locked-in, unable to move even their eyes.

After some tentative first steps, Melillo is looking more confident. He won't be swapping his wheelchair for a MindWalker just yet, but hopefully one day. "It's great finally being able to look people in the eye," he says.