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The 2009 Popular
ScienceInvention Awards
New York, NY–May11, 2009–Popular Science honors 10 stunning homebuilt
inventions and the big-thinking geniuses who developed them. PopSci
celebrates the spirit of invention by bestowing these projects, which have
the capacity to change lives and the world, with an Invention Award.
The June issue of Popular Science is on newsstands now.
“Creative inventions have the potential to radically change
our lives,” says Mark Jannot, editor-in-chief of Popular Science.
“The 10 standout inventors we’re honoring have all created unexpected
innovations that have the ability to shape our future, and I suspect we’ll
see the positive effects of these products often in the very near future.”
PopSci Invention Award winners
include ReWalk - Wearable
Exoskeleton That Allows Paraplegics to Walk. Confined to a wheelchair
after breaking his neck in a 1997 fall, Israeli engineer Amit Goffer
developed the only wearable exoskeleton that allows paraplegics to stand,
walk, and even climb stairs.
For more,
please see the June issue or visit: http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-05/robo-legs
Story Text:
Invention Awards: Robo-Legs
An
exoskeleton that enables paraplegics to walk
After breaking his neck in a 1997 fall, Israeli engineer Amit
Goffer learned that he would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of
his life. He soon concluded that this mode of transportation was outdated
and began work on the ReWalk, the only wearable exoskeleton that allows
paraplegics to stand, amble, and even climb stairs. Soon, more than a dozen
patients in the U.S.
will strap in and start strolling.
Invention: ReWalk
Inventor:
Amit Goffer
Cost: $2
million+
Time: 10
years
Is It Ready
Yet? 1 2 3 4 5
Goffer, now 56, needed a design that would be not only safe
but also energy-efficient enough to last for an entire day. "I was
worried you would need a truckload of batteries," he recalls. To solve
that problem, he made a design choice that meant he could never use it.
Goffer is paralyzed from the chest down, but he realized that if wearers
could use crutches, it would conserve energy and simplify balance, since
the device wouldn't have to keep
the person upright all on its own.
The 44-pound prototype,
which takes just a few minutes to get into, has several modes—among them,
walking, sitting, and climbing/descending stairs—that the user selects on a
wristband controller. Plant one of the crutches and lean forward in walk
mode, for example, and a tilt sensor in the ReWalk's
shoulder harness registers the motion. A computer in a backpack interprets
this data and instructs electric motors in the hip and knee of one leg to
move it forward. (Other exoskeletons, like Honda's
walking-assist device, take cues from users'
actual leg motions or electrical signals in their muscles, which wouldn't work with paraplegics.) Another plant of the
crutches and another lean, and the motors on the other side swing the
second leg ahead. Stand up straight, and the
device halts.
Like the crutches, many of the components, including the motors and battery
pack, are off-the-shelf. Goffer says it's
the control algorithms that make the difference. For example, early in the
ReWalk's development, he and his
team found that the tilt sensor could be thrown off by variations in the
way users dressed (for example, its angle could be changed if a user wore a
large belt buckle underneath the harness), so they wrote software that
accounts for those differences and corrects them. The code also has to
filter out vibrations from the ground, initiate the most energy-efficient
steps so the batteries don't
drain prematurely, quickly recognize a stumble and recover in time to
prevent a fall, and more.
Goffer says the next version will be down to about 30 pounds. Several
patients have already tested the prototype successfully abroad, and U.S.
clinical trials are set to start soon. One of ReWalk's
testers, 41-year-old paraplegic Radi Kaiof, thinks patients will be
satisfied. When strapped in, he says, "I speak eye-to-eye with people,
not from the bottom up. There is one life in a wheelchair, and this is a
new life."
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