Lifeboat Foundation

Taiwan has made a battery-powered exoskeleton suit that will allow its soldiers to run faster and carry heavy objects.

This is the first-generation suit made by the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, according to The South China Morning Post. The suit is a part of a four-year project called the “Taiwan Ironman program.” It has a budget of $5.74 million and the goal of providing Taiwan’s soldiers with a lower-body exoskeleton to increase their strength and endurance.

“To reduce fatigue of soldiers in carrying heavy facilities… we started developing the powered suit for the military in 2020,” Jen Kuo-Kuang, head developer of the project, said in comments at a news conference obtained by the SCMP.

We have achieved strong, fast, power-dense, high-efficiency, biomimetic, soft, safe, clean, organic and affordable robotic technology. Dumbbell weights 7 kg (15,6 lbs) 0 forearm with hand only 1 kg (2,2 lbs).

This artificial muscles robotic arm is operated by water and consumes 200W at peak. We invent and produce portable power supply and our own electro-hydraulic mini valves to have complete controllability of speed contraction and compress the whole powering system (for a full body) inside humanlike robot torso.

Continue reading “Artificial Muscles Robotic Arm Full Range of Motion + Static Strength Test (V11)” »

The K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics has been established thanks to a $24 million donation from philanthropist Lisa Yang, according to an MIT announcement. That’s probably not enough attain the center’s enormously ambitious goals of restoring neural function and rebuilding lost limbs, but it does get the ball rolling and bring together MIT faculty with a variety of specialties toward a common big-picture objective — potentially serving as a much-needed accelerant for disability tech research.

The new research center will fall under the leadership of MIT Media Lab professor Hugh Herr, who is a double amputee himself and has come to be known as a leader in the field of robotic prosthetics. In the MIT announcement, Herr said that he sees this new initiative as an important step toward eliminating physical disabilities altogether.

“The world profoundly needs relief from the disabilities imposed by today’s nonexistent or broken technologies,” Herr said. “We must continually strive towards a technological future in which disability is no longer a common life experience. I am thrilled that the Yang Center for Bionics will help to measurably improve the human experience for so many.”

A deepening understanding of the brain has created unprecedented opportunities to alleviate the challenges posed by disability. Scientists and engineers are taking design cues from biology itself to create revolutionary technologies that restore the function of bodies affected by injury, aging, or disease — from prosthetic limbs that effortlessly navigate tricky terrain to digital nervous systems that move the body after a spinal cord injury.

With the establishment of the new K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics, MIT is pushing forward the development and deployment of enabling technologies that communicate directly with the nervous system to mitigate a broad range of disabilities. The center’s scientists, clinicians, and engineers will work together to create, test, and disseminate bionic technologies that integrate with both the body and mind.

Using specialized nanoparticles embedded in plant leaves, MIT engineers have created a novel light-emitting plant that can be charged by an LED. In this image, the green parts are the nanoparticles that have been aggregated on the surface of spongy mesophyll tissue within the plant leaves. Credit: Courtesy of the researchers.

Using nanoparticles that store and gradually release light, engineers create light-emitting plants that can be charged repeatedly.

Using specialized nanoparticles embedded in plant leaves, MIT.

A decent chunk of energy usage goes towards lighting, so scientists at MIT are developing a new kind of passive lighting – glow-in-the-dark plants. In the latest experiment, the team has made them glow much brighter than the first generation plants, without harming their health.

The emerging field of “plant nanobionics” involves embedding nanoparticles into plants to give them new abilities. Past work by the MIT team has created plants that can send electrical signals when they need water, spinach that could be used to detect explosives, and watercress that glows in the dark.

As interesting as that last one was, the glow wasn’t particularly bright – about on par with those plastic glowing stars many of us stuck to our ceilings as kids. That’s a cool novelty but not much help for the ultimate use case of passive lighting.

The researchers, from the University of Science and Technology of China, hope that the technique – which uses liquid metal to mimic natural muscle movements — could also help to administer drugs inside the body and underwater drones.

Researchers created an artificial muscle using liquid metal that allows it to expand and contract and hope one day to use the technology to help humans.