Johannesburg – Car maker on Hyundai Motor on Thursday
said it had revealed new wearable powered robots that it claims “will
revolutionise the future of personal mobility”.
The robots, which it says are the “latest innovations in
advanced assistive medical, work and daily life exoskeletons” are on show at
the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
In a statement, the carmaker says the H-MEX (Hyundai
Medical EXoskeleton) helps patients with lower spinal cord injuries regain the
ability to walk. “By utilizing a wireless clutch with on-board motion control
system, the equipment gives paraplegics the ability to sit, stand, move, turn
and even walk up or down stairs.”
The HUMA (Hyundai Universal Medical Assist) exoskeleton
operates on a different control principle, but it provides assisted mobility
support for people with limited muscular power. It provides assistive torque to
help those with limited mobility to easily move their bodies. By adjusting
assistive torque according to each form of movement, such as walking, running,
or going up and down stairs, HUMA assists users to move. It can support up to
40kg of a wearer’s weight and, unloaded, can run at a speed up to 12km/h.
Hyundai says these capabilities would benefit for
military/industrial purposes such as load-carrying.
Meanwhile, the Hyundai Waist EXoskeleton, known as H-WEX,
provides upper-body and hip support to prevent back injuries for workers doing
repetitive manual work or lifting heavy objects.
Tae Won Lim, head of Hyundai Motor Central Advanced
Research and Engineering Institute, says “we have a vision that Hyundai Motor
will become more than just a manufacturer of cars and the advances we make in
assistive robotic technologies will allow us to offer customers new levels of
mobility freedom. In the future, we hope our pioneering exoskeleton devices
will enrich the daily lives of users and form the basis for us to provide more
mobility platforms for the well-being of our customers.”
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H-MEX and HUMA are powered by removable and rechargeable
battery packs and their light-weight frames are adjustable in length to fit
different sizes of user for ultimate comfort. The lower back and knees are
supported with harness fixture points, while the devices change shape and
flexes around the artificial joint structures of the robotic frame to manage
body posture and deliver gait efficiency for walking.
H-MEX provides individually-tailored gait pattern
adjustment by calculating a series of factors, including walking pace, length
of stride, and torso tilting angle via an application program installed in a
smart device. In addition, HUMA uses a series of advanced joints and mechanisms
to align its movement with that of the user, enabling agile motion.
The H-WEX takes similar form but instead provides a safety solution for the
workplace, assisting users with heavy lifting and other strenuous or repetitive
activities. Activating the Waist Assist function enables the exoskeleton to
flex its joints at up to 180 degrees per second, with an operating algorithm
built-in to ensure ultimate user safety. As with the other exoskeletons, the
frame of the device supports and protects the user’s lower back and upper legs
for optimal body positioning and is light-weight to ensure portability and ease
of use, the company says.