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Japan’s
‘Cyberdyne’ robot suit ready for hospital
TSUKUBA,
Japan, (AFP) - A Japanese professor announced Tuesday he was
introducing robot suits for paralysed people, helping them
to walk again by detecting their next move and lifting their
muscles.
“The time has come to introduce this technology to the
world,” Yoshiyuki Sankai, a professor at Tsukuba University
near Tokyo, announced at a news conference.
Sankai’s company producing the robot suits is named Cyberdyne
Inc., the same as the sci-fi office in the “Terminator”
films. But there is no risk of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s
character coming to blow it up.
“I believe technology becomes useful only when it works
for people,” he said at Cyberdyne’s new office.
“I refuse any possible military use of my robot suits.”
Cyberdyne will start leasing this week 500 units of the battery-powered
robot suit to assist paralysed patients at hospitals and rehabilitation
centres.
Sankai showed video footage of a man paralysed from the waist
down standing and walking as he wore the robotic limbs.
The robot suits -- dubbed HAL, or “Hybrid Assistive Limb”
-- detect natural electrical currents that pass over the surface
of the skin anticipating muscle movement. HAL, which weighs
11 kilograms (24 pounds), then automatically moves the muscle
in the way the person intended.
“You don’t feel the weight of the robot at all,”
said Takashi Hama, an executive official of Daiwa House Industry
Co., a Japanese construction firm investing into Cyberdyne.
Another prototype of HAL allows the wearer to carry 100 pounds
even though it feels like just a few pounds.
“We are looking at the future use of the robot suits
at construction sites, where workers have to carry heavy materials,”
Hama said.
Cyberdyne
is renting out the robot suits for five years at a time. Sankai
said that some European nations, particularly in Scandinavia,
have expressed interest in introducing them.
Sankai’s invention first came into prominence in 2006
when he helped Seiji Uchida -- who has been bound to a wheelchair
since a car accident in 1983 -- try to climb a peak in the
Swiss Alps.
“I see big possibilities for HAL, which not only helps
handicapped people move on their own but also assists caretakers
in caring for someone like me,” Uchida, now 46, said
at the news conference.
“The robot will lift the psychological burden we feel
when having to ask to be lifted up,” he said.
While Uchida and his party failed to make it to the top of
the 4,164-metre (13,661-foot) Breithorn peak, Uchida said
that the robot suit made his dream come true.
“I asked professor Sankai directly to help me take up
the challenge of mountain climbing,” Uchida recalled.
“It’s been two years since. I think the latest model
has a better battery system and some improvement in the knee
joints.”
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