Gizmodo
Matsushita Electric, makers of everything exoskeleton, recently annoucned their new Power Pedal robot legs. Designed for the elderly and those needing assistance, the user sits in a bicycle seat and walks somewhat normally—except with 7 times their normal leg strength. (Translation: we can all get 7 times fatter before being restricted to our beds, again).
The unit's mobility is respectable, allowing 6 directions of movement while remaining functional on uneven terrain. Today, a Power Pedal will run you $127,000. But by 2015, Matsushita hopes to bring the price down to a nominal $30,000.
Hmmm...car or robolegs, robolegs or car? Oh the decisions that the future will burden us with!
Comments
its hard to imagine "the elderly and those needing assistance" casually grocery shopping strapped to one of these.
OH OH OH my FIRST FIRST!
Next up: Peddle Powered Chocobos
Link? Better photo? Video? No? Okay....... :(
Hmmmm.
Looks to me like they were also made...for me to play with!
PLEEEEEEZE????
I can't think of a group of people I would rather not have super human cyborg strength more than grumpy old people.
could they make it bigger? with more cables and wires to hold? (i guess this puts a lot of helpful boy scouts out of work, helping grannies cross the street)
I need another exoskeleton like I need another hole in my head. I'm going in for that Tebetan third eye thing on Friday. :P
Very interesting. It looks like a step on the way to creating exoskeletal "loaders" a la the movie Alien 2 (also good, of course, for fighting said aliens hand-to-hand).
Crash900,
Well, consider what might happen if someone decided to use these to abuse some young whipper-snappers, and those kids retaliated by hacking the control system in grampa's cyborg shit-kickers. Suddenly, "grumpy old person" would be heading off on the ride of his life.
Somehow, I think there may be sweet justice just waiting in the wings for anyone who misused a pair of these.
Wallace and Gromit's "Wrong Trousers" come to mind:
[en.wikipedia.org]
Future invention by Matsushita Electric will be the Power Pedal Person loader to lift you into the robot legs...
No way my grandma can climb into that beast!
I guess they never heard of the rascal scooter or hooveround in Japan. Our old fat people here in America get around just fine.
I give it about a week before there is video of some 80yo person kicking ass at DDR with these...
At first glance it appears to be a droid kissing ass.
How the hell will the elderly climb into the contraption if they need the legs in the first place?
Better to fit the legs to their beds.
"Hmmm...car or robolegs, robolegs or car? Oh the decisions that the future will burden us with!"
Why not have a car with robo-legs. Transformers!
Goliaths from StarCraft also come to mind, all it needs is a cockpit, machine guns, and missile launchers.
its the wrong trousers Grommit
Googling this article I see it pop-up on about 6 different sites. Same text and photo.
so Web 2.0 is really - same info - different packaging.
A bit like branding for 'content'.
If the writer can count the hits - they get more 'dosh'?
Do you still need your weekend writer - sheesh.
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