Suit Up!
Troy Hurtubise, from North Bay, Ontario, has been hard at work on the Ursus Mark Vll. What exactly is it? Troy's pride and joy is an anti-bear suit. More specifically, he hopes it's a suit strong enough to withstand the force of an attack by a grizzly bear. His suit is made of stainless steel, heavy gauge aluminum and cast titanium. Among other things, it contains an AC unit, protective air bags, and a video screen. It also boasts fingered hands, swivel shoulders and built-in arms. Hurtubise calculates the time needed to create his suit of armour at 1,600 hours. The only problem is that Hurtubise himself says he could not exactly duplicate the suit, since he worked without plans, and made his suit more by picturing a hand, for instance, and then forming what he pictured in his work materials.
Stephen Herrero, director of the Eastern Slopes Grizzly Bear Project in Banff, Alberta, sees potential in Hurtubise's inventiveness for scientists wanting to study the behaviour of grizzly bears, without becoming part of the bear's dinner menu. The theory is the suit would allow the scientists to get close enough to study how bears react to humans and perhaps learn more about what factors precipitate attacks by the formidable Ursus horribilis.
Meanwhile, in a lab far away from Hurtubise's, the Hybrid Assistive Limb, or HAL, for short, (I'm guessing the inventor here did not see "2001: A Space Odyssey") has been nearing readiness for release as a commercial product. HAL is the result of 10 years of work undertaken by Yoshiyuki Sankai of the University of Tsukuba, in Japan. The assistive limb is a motor-driven "exoskeleton" that the wearer straps onto his/her legs to power-assist with leg movements. Obviously, this is something that could be an incredible boon to the disabled and the elderly. Since the current version weighs in at approximately 40 pounds, there is still work to be done to make this readily usable by those who aren't body trainers. Sankai says his aim is to make a suit thin enough to be comfy for anyone.
Sankai has had many requests for his suits from people with brain and spinal injuries, and so he plans to extend the suit's applications to include medical rehabilitation. At the moment, the HAL 3 can help its wearer to stand, walk and climb stairs. The HAL 4 and HAL 5 do even more. They also include an upper part which will assist the arms, enabling the suit's user to lift up to 40 kilograms more than they can lift without any form of aid. It is expected that the first commercial HAL's will cost between 1.5 and 2 million yen, or $14,000. to $19,000.
Personally, I see a whole lot more value in the work going on in Japan, then I do the efforts being made in North Bay. Both inventions could serve some purpose, it is true, but if there were a question of where to allocate research funds, wouldn't you rather see them given to Sankai's work?
Stephen Herrero, director of the Eastern Slopes Grizzly Bear Project in Banff, Alberta, sees potential in Hurtubise's inventiveness for scientists wanting to study the behaviour of grizzly bears, without becoming part of the bear's dinner menu. The theory is the suit would allow the scientists to get close enough to study how bears react to humans and perhaps learn more about what factors precipitate attacks by the formidable Ursus horribilis.
Meanwhile, in a lab far away from Hurtubise's, the Hybrid Assistive Limb, or HAL, for short, (I'm guessing the inventor here did not see "2001: A Space Odyssey") has been nearing readiness for release as a commercial product. HAL is the result of 10 years of work undertaken by Yoshiyuki Sankai of the University of Tsukuba, in Japan. The assistive limb is a motor-driven "exoskeleton" that the wearer straps onto his/her legs to power-assist with leg movements. Obviously, this is something that could be an incredible boon to the disabled and the elderly. Since the current version weighs in at approximately 40 pounds, there is still work to be done to make this readily usable by those who aren't body trainers. Sankai says his aim is to make a suit thin enough to be comfy for anyone.
Sankai has had many requests for his suits from people with brain and spinal injuries, and so he plans to extend the suit's applications to include medical rehabilitation. At the moment, the HAL 3 can help its wearer to stand, walk and climb stairs. The HAL 4 and HAL 5 do even more. They also include an upper part which will assist the arms, enabling the suit's user to lift up to 40 kilograms more than they can lift without any form of aid. It is expected that the first commercial HAL's will cost between 1.5 and 2 million yen, or $14,000. to $19,000.
Personally, I see a whole lot more value in the work going on in Japan, then I do the efforts being made in North Bay. Both inventions could serve some purpose, it is true, but if there were a question of where to allocate research funds, wouldn't you rather see them given to Sankai's work?
1 Comments:
Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it? "Is there anybody out there?" I guess that's why Hurtubise won the Ig.
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