Chris Stokel-Walker in Nature:
Daniel Ferris says that the best exoskeletons are the ones you forget about. When the biomechanical engineer has one on, he notices little more than a slight tugging. But after removing the device, it can seem as if he is suddenly trudging uphill. Ferris has been designing wearable exoskeletons and powered prostheses for decades, and has long thought that they would soon become a part of everyday life. In 2009, he published a prediction1 that “by 2024, people will be walking down the street, in the malls, and to their homes wearing robotic exoskeletons”.
Ferris admits he was “jumping the gun”, but his vision is getting closer to reality. At the time he made his forecast, exoskeletons were mostly being used in clinical settings to rehabilitate people after spinal-cord damage or stroke. “Exoskeletons were really targeted as: function is lost, and we need to replace this function,” says Taylor Dick, a neuromuscular biomechanist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Today, researchers and companies are increasingly talking about augmentation instead: adding a fraction of the force needed for a movement.
More here.
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