If the name Cyberdyne doesn’t immediately strike a chord, its HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) robotic suit sure will. Here at CEATEC , we ran into these people who kindly offered to strap us onto their latest prototype arm — a rather smaller variant of the single installed on Cyberdyne’s current suit. The various HAL’s main part was strapped to the outer side of our upper arm with velcro, while our wrist was tied to the much smaller extendable piece; both parts were hinged along with an influence unit. Additionally, a sensory pad was applied onto our forearm’s medial cutaneous nerve (across the elbow area) to pick out up our muscular nerve signal — similarly, Cyberdyne’s lower-body exosuit requires two sensors on each leg.
Our HAL was energized once we tensed our arm muscles, so lifting up the tray of 4 1.5kg water bottles was a bit of cake consistently in the course of the demo — we even managed it with just our pinky (see video above)! And once Cyberdyne’s lovely assistant Fumi turned the dial down, our superhuman powers were instantly taken away. We weren’t given any dates or specs for this piece of equipment, but when all goes well, we may perhaps see a new full-body suit at CES 2012 in January, so stay tuned. Oh, and may someone please get Cyberdyne some WD-40?
Zach Honig contributed to this report.
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