which they do around 4 600 times a day,
or one million times a year. The EksoVest
provides 2–7kg of lift assistance per arm
when the springs are activated, reducing
strain on a worker’s body and lowering the
likelihood of injury while ensuring increased
productivity. The vest is also engineered to
work with specific tools, such as drill drivers,
impact drivers, and torque wrenches, as
well as in tool-less applications, including
pushing in fastener rivets, snapping fuel
lines into place, and lifting other underbody
components into place. (Ekso Bionics also
makes a lower body exoskeleton designed
to help patients with stroke and spinal cord
injury rehabilitation.)
While this exoskeleton doesn’t have the
capabilities of the Guardian GT, combining
these two technologies would put us well
on the way to achieving fitted exoskeletons
that could be used to enable people to scale
up their abilities, from lifting heavy loads to
manually manipulating components that are
too large, too heavy, or otherwise outside
the realms of normal human capabilities.
Ultimately, augmentation technology such
as the Guardian GT or the EksoVest will
allow people to be stronger, faster, and
more productive. Wearable artificial limbs
that interface mechanically with the body
do not have to be limited to replacing limbs
that people have lost — they can also be
used to push the human body further than
ever before.
Soft robots
Another promising area is that of soft
robotics, which overlaps with both remote-
controlled and human-piloted robots. This is
because rather than being a different type
of machine, it focuses on using a different
type of material. Soft robotics is a subfield of
robotics inspired by biological organisms that
deal with constructing robots from highly
compliant materials. It draws heavily from
the way in which living organisms move and
adapt to their surroundings, and allows for
increased flexibility, adaptability, and safety
when working around people, compared to
robots built from rigid materials.
INNOVATION
Origami-inspired artificial muscles are capable
of lifting up to 1 000 times their own weight,
simply by applying air or water pressure.
Last year, researchers at Harvard University’s
Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired
Engineering and MIT’s Computer Science and
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) created
origami-inspired artificial muscles that allow
soft robots to lift objects up to 1 000 times their
own weight using only air or water pressure.
The concept requires only three elements: a