Quick: who can lift a car over his head, or leap tall buildings in a single bound? If you said Superman, you’re wrong (and you’re a nerd). A “normal person” is the correct answer–or, at least, it will be, if Eythor Bender has his way. Bender and his team at Berkley Bionics have spent the last few years designing mechanized exoskeletons to fit over our own limbs, in order to improve the strength, speed, and stability of the human body (because robot limbs are so overpowered).
Bender presented his team’s work at a TED conference this March, by first explaining the benefits of “wearable robots” to those in combat. Average American soldiers carry approximately 100 pounds of equipment on them, which has been shown to cause many significant health problems, such as chronic back pain, later in life. To combat this, Bender and his team at Berkley Bionics developed the exoskeleton HULC, the “Human Universal Load Carrier”. A soldier donning the HULC explained that while wearing it, he could carry over 200 pounds of equipment for an extended period of time. In addition, the exoskeleton detects slight movements of specific muscles, which gives the exoskeleton an apparent ability to predict the wearer’s movement, making actions like walking, climbing and running significantly easier (no more -2 to Speed on difficult terrain).
However, despite all super-human abilities considered, Bender’s exoskeleton gives people the opportunity to have something far more important: regular human abilities. Paralyzing injuries are devastating, taking away a person’s livelihood in a instant without any warning. Until now, those with paralyzed legs were confined to wheelchairs for mobility, which are horrendously inconvenient to say the least. Using his HULC exoskeleton, Bender designed a second – designated “eLEGS” – to assist the movement of once-paralyzed individuals. The eLEGS system was showcased by Amanda Boxtel, who became paralyzed from the waist down after a skiing accident. Despite not having walked for nearly two decades, Boxtel was able to walk across the conference stage with the help of the battery-powered limbs.
Even more shocking than these two extraordinary feats is the fact that they have been accomplished by machines in a relatively new field. As research into exoskeletons continues, the technology will become more and more advanced, making useable powered exoskeletons as seen in the Halo and Fallout series a realistic possibility. With this technology available, human speed and strength could be pushed to extraordinary limits. Just imagine all of the jars you could open!
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