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Paraplegics In Iron Man-like Exoskeletons to Kick Off FIFA World Cup ’14
Sports are no longer exclusive for people with perfect bodies, as the eight paraplegics wearing exo-skeletons will demonstrate today, while kicking off the FIFA World Cup 2014 championship in Brazil.
The similarities between the exo-skeletons that these paralyzed persons will wear today and the one worn by Tony Stark as Iron Man arise from the fact that both are brain-controlled. Other than that, the designs differ quite a lot.
Prof. Gordon Cheng at Technische Universität München explained how the idea of building such exo-skeletons came after a collaboration with Prof. Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University and the International Institute for Neurosciences of Natal, Brazil: “Miguel set up a monkey walking on a treadmill in North Carolina, and then I made my humanoid robot [which you can see in the above picture] walk with the signal in Kyoto. Our brains are very adaptive in the way that we can extend our embodiment to use tools, as in driving a car or eating with chopsticks. After the Kyoto experiment, we felt certain that the brain could also liberate a paralyzed person to walk using an external body.”
The Walk Again Project includes 100 researchers from all over the globe, Cheng being a team leader with a noble scope: “It’s a key societal endeavor that we want to accomplish, to enable someone to walk again after they have been paralyzed for many years.”
Cheng pointed out that there’s a lot of room for future improvements, and the team won’t stop here: “This is one big milestone, a demonstration of what science can really do for somebody, but we still have a lot to do. We should be able to make the exoskeleton cheaper, more agile, more diverse for the patient. I think we’ll be able to invest another 10 years on this, and it’s a worthy effort. Also, I see it as a great tribute to all the patients’ hard work and their bravery!”
The idea of helping paralyzed people enjoy life again by helping them walk would’ve been absurd a few decades ago, and pure heresy or witchcraft a few centuries ago. However, it is now quite clear that the only source of miracles is represented by science and the researchers that put a lot of time and thinking into creating such innovative concepts.
Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the powered jacket MK3 exoskeleton that helps schoolgirls fight bullies and the HAL-5 exoskeleton robot suit.
Alt-week 10.13.12: is the Universe a simulation, cloning dinosaurs and singing mice
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.
Are you reading this? Seriously, are you? Sure, we know you think you are, but what if you're just a sub-feature of a complex computer program. A sprite, nothing more than the creation of software. The problem with this question is, how would you ever know? You wouldn't, right? Well, not so fast there. Turns out, maybe there is a way to unravel the matrix (if there is one). It'll come as no surprise, that this is one of the topics in this week's collection of alternative stories. Think that's all we got? Not even close. We'll explore the truth behind cloning dinosaurs, as well a rare performance by singing mice -- all before dinner. Or is it really dinner? This is alt-week.
Continue reading Alt-week 10.13.12: is the Universe a simulation, cloning dinosaurs and singing mice
Alt-week 10.13.12: is the Universe a simulation, cloning dinosaurs and singing mice originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Oct 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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