Exoskeleton drawings. How do exoskeletons work? DIY exoskeleton: rough diagram

Exoskeletons help the paralyzed walk, make hard work easy, protect soldiers on the battlefield and give us superpowers.

1. Activelink Power Loader

Named after the famous exoskeleton from the movie Aliens, the Activelink Power Loader is designed to lighten heavy manual labor owner, regardless of his age, gender and build, and aims to “create a society without restrictions” according to the Activelink press release, subsidiary company famous Japanese electronics manufacturer Panasonic.

2. HAL

HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) is a mechanical exoskeleton from Japan developed by Cyberdine Inc. (yes, just like those guys who started it all in the Terminator), was created as a prototype in 1997, and is now used in Japanese hospitals to help seriously ill patients in their daily activities. It is also known that HAL was used by Japanese construction workers and even rescuers during the liquidation of the Fukushima-1 accident in 2011.

3. Ekso Bionics

14. Project “Walk Again”

The 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil was opened by Juliano Pinto, who was paralyzed from the waist down and was given the right to kick the World Cup ball first. This was made possible thanks to an exoskeleton connected directly to his brain, developed by Duke University. This event is part of the Walk Again project, created by a team of 150 people led by renowned neurologist and leading figure in the field of brain-machine interfaces, Dr. Miguel Nicolelis. Juliano Pinto simply thought that he wanted to kick the ball, the exoskeleton recorded brain activity and activated the mechanisms necessary for movement.

An exoskeleton is an external frame that allows a person to perform truly fantastic actions: lift weights, fly, run at great speed, make giant leaps, etc. And if you think that only the main characters have such devices" Iron Man" or "Avatar", then you are deeply mistaken. They have been available to humanity since the 60s of the last century; moreover, you can learn how to assemble an exoskeleton with your own hands! However, first things first.

Exoskeleton: introduction

Today you can easily buy yourself an exoskeleton - similar products are produced by Ekso Bionics and Hybrid Assistive Limb (Japan), Indego (USA), ReWalk (Israel). But only if you have an extra 75-120 thousand euros. In Russia, only medical exoskeletons are currently produced. They are designed and produced by the Exoatlet company.

Scientists from General Electric and United States Military corporations made the first exoskeleton with their own hands back in the sixties of the last century. It was called Hardiman and could freely lift into the air a maximum load of 110 kg. The person who put on this device experienced a load in the process, as if lifting 4.5 kg! Only Hardiman himself weighed all 680 kg. That is why he was not in great demand.

All exoskeletons are divided into three types:

fully robotic;

for legs.

Modern robotic suits weigh from 5 to 30 or more kg. They can be either active or passive (working only at the operator’s command). According to their purpose, exoskeletons are divided into military, medical, industrial and space. Let's look at the most remarkable of them.

The most impressive exoskeletons of our time

Of course, it won’t be possible to assemble such exoskeletons with your own hands at home in the near future, but it’s worth getting to know them:

DM (Dream machine). This is a fully automatic hydraulic exoskeleton that is controlled by the voice of its operator. The device weighs 21 kg and can support a person weighing up to a hundredweight. So far it is used for the rehabilitation of patients who cannot walk due to diseases of the central nervous system or other neuromuscular diseases. approximate cost- 7 million rubles.
Exo GT. The mission of this exoskeleton is the same as the previous one - it helps people with pathologies motor functions legs The characteristics are similar to the previous one, the price is 7.5 million rubles.
ReWalk. Called to once again give movement to people with paralysis lower limbs. The device weighs 25 kg and can work without recharging for 3 hours. The exoskeleton is available in Europe and the USA for an amount equivalent to 3.5 million rubles.
REX. Today this device can be bought in Russia for 9 million rubles. The exoskeleton gives people with leg paralysis not only independent walking, but also the ability to stand up/sit down, turn around, moonwalk, go down stairs, etc. REX is controlled by a joystick and can function without recharging all day.
HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb). There are two versions - for arms and for arms/legs/torso. This invention allows the operator to lift a weight 5 times heavier than the limit for a person. It is also used for the rehabilitation of paralyzed people. This exoskeleton weighs only 12 kg, and its charging lasts for 1.0-1.5 hours.

How to make your own exoskeleton: James Hacksmith Hobson

The first and so far only person who managed to construct an exoskeleton outside the laboratory is Canadian engineer James Hobson. The inventor has assembled a device that allows him to freely lift 78-kilogram cinder blocks into the air. Its exoskeleton operates on pneumatic cylinders, which are supplied with energy by a compressor, and the device is controlled using a remote control.

The Canadian does not keep his invention a secret. You can learn how to assemble an exoskeleton with your own hands following his example on the engineer’s website and on his YouTube channel. However, keep in mind that the weight lifted by such an exoskeleton rests solely on the operator's spine.

DIY exoskeleton: rough diagram

There are no detailed instructions for easily assembling the exoskeleton at home. However, it is clear that it will require:

frame, characterized by strength and mobility;
hydraulic pistons;
pressure chambers;
vacuum pumps;
power supply;
durable tubes that can withstand high pressure;
computer for control;
sensors;
software that allows you to send and convert information from sensors for required work valves

How this composition will roughly work:

One pump must increase the pressure in the system, the other must decrease it.
The operation of the valves depends on the pressure in the pressure chambers, the increase/decrease of which will control the system.
Arrangement of sensors (against the movement of the limbs): six - arms, four - back, three - legs, two feet (more than 30 in total).
Computer software should eliminate pressure on the sensors.
Sensor signals need to be divided into conditional (the information from them is useful if the unconditional sensor does not “speak” about the pressure it experiences) and unconditional. The conditionality/unconditionality of these elements can be determined, for example, by an accelerometer.
The exoskeleton's hands are three-fingered, separated from the operator's wrist, to prevent injury and provide additional strength.
The power source is selected after assembly and trial testing of the exoskeleton.

Robotic suits, so far only in the field of rehabilitation, are already beginning to enter our lives. Inventors are emerging who are able to build such a device outside the laboratory. It is quite possible that in the near future any schoolchild will be able to assemble a Stalker exoskeleton with his own hands. It is already possible to predict that such systems are the future.

Science brings the development of technology to a fundamentally new level. Today there are more and more interesting projects, which allow you to control equipment using the power of thought. So far, most of these developments are of a medical nature, but each of them has enormous commercial potential. One such was shown by a group of Swiss scientists quite recently.

Who wouldn't want to move objects using just the power of their thoughts? Scientists from the École Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) have taken another step towards the development of such technologies. They developed a lightweight exoskeleton for the human hand, which in the future can provide significant assistance to people with disabilities. The uniqueness of the development lies in the fact that the exoskeleton is controlled using brain impulses.

The Swiss development consists of several important components: a soft EEG helmet with electrodes, a control unit with monitors and five connected metal tendon cables that stretch along the entire human arm and are attached to outside hands, leaving the palm free. The helmet is needed to record brain impulses. The control unit is fixed on the patient's chest.

It only takes a few minutes to attach this entire system to a person. Do without outside help This is still difficult, however, the device is already qualitatively different from its analogues. Besides, new development It was able to stand out from the crowd of similar devices also because it is very light in weight. The exoskeleton supports several forms of control; it can be controlled using eye movements, voice commands, and even a smartphone.

On this moment the new product has already been tested on patients who had previously received serious injuries spinal cord or have had a stroke. The creators hope that their development will be able to help people in the rehabilitation process, primarily when performing usual household chores.

Continuing the topic today.

If you are one of those who watched all the parts of Iron Man with great pleasure, you were probably delighted with iron suit, which Tony Stark wore before fighting the villains. Agree, it would be nice to have such a suit. In addition to the ability to take you anywhere in the blink of an eye, even for bread, it would protect your body from all kinds of damage and give superhuman strength.

It probably won't surprise you that very soon, a lighter version of the Iron Man suit will allow soldiers to run faster, carry heavier weapons and navigate rough terrain. At the same time, the suit will protect them from bullets and bombs. Military engineers and private companies have been working on exoskeletons since the 1960s, but only recent advances in electronics and materials science have brought us closer to realizing this idea than ever before.

In 2010, US defense contractor Raytheon demonstrated an experimental exoskeleton called XOS 2—essentially a robotic suit controlled by the human brain—that could lift two to three times the weight of a human without any effort or assistance. Another company, Trek Aerospace, is developing an exoskeleton with a built-in jetpack that can fly at speeds of 112 km/h and hover motionless above the ground. These and a number of other promising companies, including such monsters as Lockheed Martin, are bringing the Iron Man suit closer to reality every year.

Read the interview with the creator of the Russian exoskeleton Stakhanov.

ExoskeletonXOS 2 fromRaytheon

Note that not only the military will benefit from the development of a good exoskeleton. One day, people with spinal cord injuries or degenerative diseases that limit mobility will be able to move around with ease thanks to external frame suits. The first versions of exoskeletons, such as ReWalk from Argo Medical Technologies, have already entered the market and received widespread approval. However, at the moment, the field of exoskeletons is still in its infancy.

What revolution do future exoskeletons promise to bring to the battlefield? What technical hurdles must engineers and designers overcome to make exoskeletons truly practical? everyday use? Let's figure it out.

History of the development of exoskeletons

Warriors have been putting armor on their bodies since time immemorial, but the first idea of a body with mechanical muscles appeared in science fiction in 1868, in one of Edward Sylvester Ellis's dime novels. The book "Steam Man of the Prairies" described a giant steam engine human form, which moved its inventor, the brilliant Johnny Brainerd, at a speed of 96.5 km/h when he hunted bulls and Indians.

But this is fantastic. The first real patent for an exoskeleton was received by Russian mechanical engineer Nikolai Yagn in the 1890s in America. The designer, known for his developments, lived overseas for more than 20 years and patented a dozen ideas describing an exoskeleton that allows soldiers to run, walk and jump with ease. However, in fact, Yagn is known only for the creation of the “Stoker's Friend” - an automatic device that supplies water to steam boilers.

Exoskeleton patented by N. Yagn

By 1961, two years after Marvel Comics came up with Iron Man and Robert Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers, the Pentagon decided to make its own exosuits. He set out to create a "servo soldier", which was described as a "human capsule equipped with steering and amplifiers" that allowed heavy objects to be moved quickly and easily, as well as protecting the wearer from bullets, poisonous gas, heat and radiation. By the mid-1960s, Cornell University engineer Neil Meisen had developed a 15.8-kilogram wearable framed exoskeleton, dubbed the “superman suit” or “human amplifier.” It allowed the user to lift 453 kilograms with each hand. At the same time, General Electric had developed a similar 5.5-meter device, the so-called “pedipulator,” which was controlled by an operator from the inside.

Despite these very interesting steps, they were not crowned with success. The suits proved impractical, but research continued. In the 1980s, scientists at the Los Alamos Laboratory created a design for the so-called Pitman suit, an exoskeleton for use by American troops. However, the concept remained only drawing board. Since then, the world has seen several more developments, but lack of materials and energy limitations have not allowed us to see the real Iron Man suit.

For years, exoskeleton manufacturers have been stymied by the limits of technology. The computers were too slow to process the commands that powered the suits. There wasn't enough power supply to make the exoskeleton portable enough, and the electromechanical actuator muscles that moved the limbs were simply too weak and bulky to function in a "human" way. Nevertheless, a start had been made. The idea of an exoskeleton turned out to be too promising for the military and medical fields to simply part with it.

Man-machine

In the early 2000s, the quest to create a real Iron Man suit began to get somewhere.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA, incubator of exotic and advanced technologies The Pentagon launched a $75 million program to create an exoskeleton to augment the human body and its performance. DARPA's list of requirements was quite ambitious: the agency wanted a vehicle that would allow a soldier to tirelessly carry hundreds of kilograms of cargo for days on end, support large guns that typically require two operators, and be able to carry a wounded soldier off the battlefield if necessary. In this case, the car must be invulnerable to fire, and also jump high. Many immediately considered DARPA's plan impracticable.

But not all.

Sarcos - led by robot creator Steve Jacobsen, who previously created an 80-ton mechanical dinosaur - came up with innovation system, in which sensors used these signals to control a set of valves, which in turn regulated hydraulics under high pressure in the joints. The mechanical joints moved cylinders connected by cables that mimicked the tendons that connect human muscles. As a result, the experimental exoskeleton XOS was born, which made a person look like a giant insect. Sarcos was eventually acquired by Raytheon, which continued development to introduce the second generation of the suit five years later.

The XOS 2 exoskeleton excited the public so much that Time magazine included it in its Top 5 list of 2010.

Meanwhile, other companies, like Berkeley Bionics, were working to reduce the amount of energy that artificial prosthetics required so that the exoskeleton could function long enough to be practical. One project from the 2000s, the Human Load Carrier (HULC), could operate for up to 20 hours on a single charge. Progress was moving forward little by little.

Exoskeleton HAL

By the end of the decade Japanese company Cyberdyne has developed a robotic suit called HAL, which is even more incredible in its design. Instead of relying on the muscle contractions of a human operator, HAL operated on sensors that read electrical signals operator's brain. In theory, a HAL-5-based exoskeleton could allow the user to do anything they want just by thinking about it, without moving a single muscle. But for now, these exoskeletons are a project of the future. And they have their own problems. For example, only a few exoskeletons have been approved for public use to date. The rest are still being tested.

Development problems

By 2010, the DARPA project to create exoskeletons led to certain results. Currently, advanced exoskeleton systems weighing up to 20 kilograms can lift up to 100 kilograms payload with virtually no operator effort. At the same time, the latest exoskeletons are quieter than an office printer, can move at a speed of 16 km/h, perform squats and jump.

Not long ago, one of the defense contractors, Lockheed Martin, introduced its exoskeleton designed for heavy lifting. The so-called “passive exoskeleton,” designed for shipyard workers, simply transfers the load to the exoskeleton’s legs on the ground.

The difference between modern exoskeletons and those developed in the 60s is that they are equipped with sensors and GPS receivers. Thus, further raising the stakes for military use. Soldiers could gain a host of benefits using such exoskeletons, from precise geopositioning to additional superpowers. DARPA is also developing automated fabrics that could be used in exoskeletons to monitor heart and respiratory health.

If American industry continues to move along this path, it will very soon have vehicles that can not only move “faster, higher, stronger,” but also carry an additional several hundred payloads. However, it will be at least several more years before the real " iron men"will enter the battlefield.

As is often the case, the developments of military agencies (think, for example, the Internet) can be of great benefit in peacetime, as the technology will eventually come out and help people. Suffering from complete or partial paralysis, people with spinal cord injuries and muscle atrophy will be able to lead more fulfilling lives. Berkeley Bionics, for example, is testing eLegs, a battery-powered exoskeleton that would allow a person to walk, sit, or simply stand for long periods of time.

One thing is certain: the process of rapid development of exoskeletons began at the beginning of this century (let's call it the second wave), and how it all ends will become known very, very soon. Technologies never stand still, and if engineers take on something, they bring it to its logical conclusion.

An exoskeleton is an external frame that allows a person to perform truly fantastic actions: lift weights, fly, run at great speed, make giant leaps, etc. And if you think that only the main characters of “Iron Man” or “Avatar” have such devices, then you are deeply mistaken. They have been available to humanity since the 60s. last century; Moreover, you can learn how to assemble an exoskeleton with your own hands! However, first things first.