How to Save Money When Buying exoskeleton joint actuator

Rating: 8/10 | Price: From $899 

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WIRED

A surprisingly convincing consumer exoskeleton. Light and portable. Great home-gym addition.
 

TIRED

Still needs technical finessing. Requires a lot of confidence to be worn outdoors. Not as exciting in running mode.

In winter, my nose gets very cold, very quickly. Whether I&#;m at home or out on the streets, my nose&#;unlike any other part of my body&#;turns icy, spoiling whatever activity I am engaged in. A few weeks ago, after years of suffering, I bought a nose-warmer. Yes, they do exist. Mine is, technically, a purple cup of fleece with a strap: you slide a nose into it, and the snout stays warm. Problem solved&#;or so I thought. 

What I had not factored in when buying the nose-warmer were the stares. Just try taking a stroll with a nose-warmer on. Even in blasé London&#;and even after two years of generalized mask-wearing&#;people will look at you, make funny faces at you, and, very likely, judge you for donning a fleece on your nose. Now I wear my nose-warmer outdoors only when strictly necessary; I mostly use it in the comfort of my home. Which brings me to the question: If the world cannot cope with nose-warmers, will it ever be ready for exoskeletons?

Hong Kong&#; and Shenzhen-based company Enhanced Robotics has created the Sportsmate 5. On the surface, it looks like a rather elaborate tool belt. In fact, it is an exoskeleton&#;a piece of wearable robotics that can boost one&#;s physical performance&#;designed for athletes and casually sporty people alike. 

Enhanced Robotic hopes that Sportsmate 5 will become the first consumer exoskeleton ever: Right now, these kinds of machines are either developed with trudging soldiers in mind (Darpa has been funding research on the technology for decades) or used in medical contexts as mobility aids for people who have suffered a spinal cord injury. 

The Sportsmate 5 pitch is quite different: It wants to help you run faster or for longer without getting too tired, and it wants to be an all-inclusive device to spice up your bodyweight workout. The project has so far raised over $119,000 on Kickstarter&#;breezing over the initial stated goal of $7,500&#;and, if all goes to plan, the first devices will be shipped in May of next year at a price of $1,458. Take the risk and pay your money now, and this drops to $899. But is it worth the punt? Luckily, Enhanced Robotics sent me a prototype to try. 

Sportsmate 5&#;s design is pretty straightforward: It&#;s a plastic girdle&#;lined with an inflatable airbag to provide a snug fit&#;fitted with two small motors, or actuators, which sit on the wearer&#;s hip joints. The actuators, powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion 3,000-mAh/22.2V battery placed at the back of the belt, control two segmented metal rods, which in turn are clasped to a pair of fabric leg straps, to be wound around the thighs. 

The exoskeleton comes in various sizes&#;I had to provide my measurements for my waist and thigh girth&#;and, in its final version, it should weigh 2.5 kg and include two shoulder straps. My prototype was a bit heavier (around 3.5 kg) and featured no shoulder kit. 

Enhanced Robotics&#; founder and CEO Hanqi Leon Zhu is not just some random Robocop enthusiast: he is an accomplished electromechanical engineer with a successful academic career, and the company says that&#;besides working with trainers and athletes&#;it is still partnering &#;on exoskeleton research&#; with academics at the University of Michigan and Clemson University. Indeed, Zhu devoted his PhD thesis, presented in at the University of Texas at Dallas, to developing a new kind of cheap, user-friendly medical exoskeleton. 

The way Sportsmate 5 works builds on the ideas Zhu developed in his thesis: unlike most medical exoskeletons, which often force the user&#;s limbs to move along a specific trajectory, Sportsmate 5 simply provides torque, adding energy to&#;or resisting&#;whatever movement the user is already making. The actuators will pull up or push down the metal prongs in a semicircular path, taking the user&#;s strapped legs along for the ride. When assisting, the unit offers up to 18Nm (13.3lb-ft) of torque. To get more of a workout while exercising, at the flick of a switch the same motors that were previously helping now provide up to 10Nm (7.4lb-ft) of resistance torque, making it harder to move your legs. 

Enhanced Robotics says that the exoskeleton also uses an algorithm to analyse the user&#;s gait and adjust its assistance accordingly. In other words, the faster your legs move, the more energetically the exoskeleton will be wagging its prongs. 

Sportsmate 5 has two main modes (along with some sub modes of these): outdoor, for running and hiking; and fitness, or &#;gem&#; (yes, &#;gem&#; not &#;gym&#;) as per the label on the button. These different modes are selected through utilitarian, and sometimes hard to locate, control buttons on both sides of the belt. 

Let&#;s start with the first one. I tested the exoskeleton several times, taking runs around my east London neighborhood. There are some technical wrinkles Enhanced Robotics will want to iron out: the legs straps got looser over time, uncomfortably climbing up my thighs; the battery pack was wobbly and kept falling, so I had to sellotape it in place; even after that, the battery sometimes acted up&#;despite having undergone a full charge&#;forcing a turn-off. Also, during an early trial run, due uniquely to my incompetence at properly fastening the belt, I ended up having the whole thing falling off mid-sprint.

But once those snags were dealt with, running with my exo was not unpleasant at all. I mostly used the &#;assistance&#; option at the maximum level of four (the &#;resistance&#; option is designed to enhance stability on perilous terrains), and I did feel like I was zooming through life&#;well, through east London&#;like some kind of augmented cyborg. The experience was smooth, and I never felt like I was lugging around a chunk of metal, which is saying a lot, given that I was lugging around a chunk of metal. 

The question, of course, is whether this thing really helped me run better. To establish that, I timed myself running around a certain block of flats, first au naturel and then wearing the exoskeleton. The difference was not dramatic: it took me 5.14 minutes to complete a lap when aided by Sportsmate, as opposed to 5.22 minutes without wearing it. But what impressed me more was how, when I stopped at the end of the run, Sportsmate was still there, gently nudging me to walk at a leisurely pace, like a sportswear-clad marionette, until I was home. I can see how, on a longer distance (the exoskeleton&#;s battery life is three hours) or while on a hike, such a device could be the difference between soldiering on and sitting despondently on a boulder. 

That is one of the two reasons why I tend to think that Sportsmate 5&#;s running mode is better used while roaming the great outdoors rather than jogging in an urban environment; the other reason is what I call the Nose-Warmer Factor. There is no way to run about in an exoskeleton and not feel self-conscious about it: I had kids point their little forefingers at me, non-augmented runners scoff as I whirred past them, and passersby subjecting me to everything from mild disapproval to open mockery. 

We might very well be on the verge of an exoskeleton boom: the sector is nascent, and a recent review of the technology found that the first exoskeleton that did actually improve a user&#;s walking and running was only built in . But being an early adopter is tough, whether as a nose-warmer pioneer or as an exoskeleton trailblazer. I am not sure I have the confidence to pull it off. (There is  another, separate question on whether using an exoskeleton in assistive mode would detract from the health benefits of exercising, by making it less challenging, or whether, by enabling users to go on for longer, it would end up being a net positive. The jury is still out on that.)

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All this is why I think that the indoor fitness mode is the Sportsmate 5&#;s real boon. When used this way, Enhanced Robotics&#;s creation is a perfect addition to your home gym equipment. It again has two functionalities: extension and flexion, each most appropriate for different types of exercise. For instance, use extension resistance for squats and you will have to work against the actuators to bend your legs. Switch to flexion for lunges or donkey kicks, and any attempt to swing your legs backwards will be met with an equal and opposite reaction from the exoskeleton. In this mode, simple but effective, Sportsmate 5 is a game changer: what would usually be a relatively boring set of bodyweight routines, becomes a much more challenging&#;and rewarding&#;workout while wearing the exo. 

This is particularly relevant right now: over the past few months, people who were still too wary of the coronavirus and its multiple variants to venture to a public indoor fitness center have been wrestling with the conundrum of how to build a decent home gym in a way that both minimizes cost and saves up space. Resistance bands are dodgy and can snap at the most inappropriate times (ask my forearm); dumbbells weighing over five kilograms are so pricey they might as well be gold-plated; a set of weights, let alone a bench, takes up a lot of room, a precious commodity for apartment dwellers. 

In this context, a piece of equipment like Sportsmate 5 is a godsend. While not cheap, it is versatile, portable and compact (if needs be, it can be stashed in a drawer). In this day and age, an exoskeleton might be just what your home gym set-up needs to really work. 

Enhanced Robotics&#;s device is not perfect, and there are a good few elements that need to be perfected on this prototype for the final production model, but, surprisingly, it delivers on its promises&#;providing an exciting glimpse of an exo-powered fitness future.

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This article was originally published by WIRED UK

As some of you may or may not know, I&#;m interested in everything exoskeleton related. I&#;ve been messing around with my own designs for the past year or so, and just this past weekend, tested out the latest lower body design. There are a lot of boring (and some would say safe) ways to test this. But that&#;s no fun. For my test I used the lower-half of the exoskeleton to pick up a Mini Cooper.

You might remember my original upper-body design which was something I threw together in my garage as a proof of concept. It worked well for what it was, and surprisingly, took the internet by storm &#; amassing over a million views in a single week for a video of me curling 170lbs in my backyard. The fire had started &#; I knew I had to make something better. And that was the beginning of my quest to build a full-body powered exoskeleton.

The biggest problem with the original was a lack of back support &#; it didn&#;t matter how much weight I could lift, it was still my feeble human skeleton taking the weight. So it was time to go back to the drawing board, and start the design from the ground up.

Living the Dream

The project had been slow going with my time being taken up by pesky work, until just before Christmas when I decided to quit my full-time job as a Product Developer (I&#;m a mech engineer) and focus on exoskeletons, YouTube, and effectively become a &#;Hacker for Hire&#; &#; more on that in a future post!

Shortly after that, the German Science show Galileo reached out and asked if they could feature my new exoskeleton on their show &#; I agreed, and may or may not have promised them a feat of strength I wasn&#;t even sure I&#;d be capable of doing &#; lifting a car.

Like most engineers, I work best under pressure, so with less than a week to go before the interview, we started working on the legs. Getting the strength to lift a car was quite easy. I had a pair of 63mm bore diameter pneumatic cylinders, which at 125PSI are capable of lifting over 800lbs a piece. The fun part was attaching them to my body in order to do it.

Now truth-be-told, the cylinder mounts are not that elegant. Which is why I&#;m designing the exoskeleton to be completely modular &#; you can just remove the cylinders when you don&#;t need them &#; because you&#;re never going to be able to run with giant pneumatics like that. Not to mention we don&#;t possess arc reactor technology required to power an exoskeleton for any reasonable length of time&#;

Don&#;t Worry, They Lock

No, no, the real genius (if I do say so myself), is in the mechanical legs behind the cylinders. The locking joints that are able to take huge amounts of force.

Ratcheting joints on the exoskeleton allow me to take weight without any pressure or force going through my body. In the above test, we ran out of weights to put on the bar. The joints allow the exoskeleton to be flexible in free-float mode, which means I can even run with them &#; but provide amazing support and rigidity when required in locked mode.

Similar to the &#;chair-less chair&#;, exoskeleton legs like these could allow workers to work in awkward positions without straining their bodies. Or for a full-body solution, how about Lockheed Martin&#;s FORTIS exoskeleton?

While advancing battery technology will expand powered exoskeleton suits&#; potential greatly, I believe the next breakthrough in functional exoskeletons is much more simple. It&#;s all about mechanical advantage. 

Leveraging Leverage

The wheel, and then the bicycle revolutionized the transportation industry. It allowed humans to leverage mechanical advantage using gear-trains in order to do things they never could before. Like moving at speeds of over 120km/h under your own, very human, power.

We already use many tools that take advantage of leverage and gear ratios, so what if we could create an exoskeleton that did what the bicycle did for transportation, but instead allow humans to achieve super-human levels of strength for fields like construction, disaster relief, the military, and every other task that pushes past what our own bodies can handle?

That&#;s what gets me excited. Without any further ado, here are the final preparations, and then the big test.

Now obviously, leaving this project (and test!) to the last minute wasn&#;t the smartest thing to do, but hey, the German TV crew got to film a bit of the &#;making of&#; as we hurried to finish it that morning. We&#;ve learned a lot and have many things to improve on the design &#; you may have noticed in the video that the shin brace of the exoskeleton actually came undone during the first test! Luckily, it wasn&#;t catastrophic, and we were able to fix it before the final tests. If you&#;re interested in following the project further, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel, where I post updates almost every week.

Way back in  we covered real-life power suits. We&#;re probably going to need a refresher soon&#; but obviously none of those designs have taken off in a big way. You&#;ve never seen any one of them in use in real life, right? But all it will take is the right design seen through to the end.

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