Assistive exoskeletons are a bit like electric bikes – they do indeed give users a power boost, but part of that boost is needed just to move the extra weight along. Japanese researchers at Hiroshima University and Daiya Industry Co., however, have created a minimalist exoskeleton that does away with heavy batteries and motors. Instead, their Unplugged Powered Suit (UPS) harnesses the wearer's own weight.
The UPS consists of a pump located under the sole of the user's foot, an air hose that runs up the leg from that pump, and what's known as a Pneumatic Gel Muscle (PGM).
With each step that the wearer takes, their foot presses down on the pump. This pushes air up the hose to a hip belt, where it's relayed into the PGM. There, it temporarily causes a gel contained within the device to compress, causing the whole thing to contract and relax like a natural muscle.
See also at Aalborg University and Hiroshima University.
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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
MacDill Matters: Iron Man suit out at SOCom, but new innovations still needed for commandos
A competition with an entry deadline of Feb. 15 seeks innovations in 12 areas, including artificial intelligence for psychological operations, improved human performance and undetectable video manipulation.
[...] Last week, James Smith, SOCom's acquisition executive, announced that the final product, known as the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, or TALOS, would not match the initial sales pitch, according Patrick Tucker writing in Defense One.
"It's not the Iron Man. I'll be the first person to tell you that," Smith told the crowd at a key D.C. special operations forum. The exoskeleton, Smith told the audience, is "not ready for prime time in a close-combat environment."
Instead, Tucker writes, the technologies developed, including lightweight body armor and situational awareness in helmet displays, will be chunked off and used elsewhere, if wanted.
(Full disclosure: I work for tampabay.com - and normally would not submit articles from the site, however, in this case I think the technologies and decisions about how to use them discussed in the articles would be of interest to the community.)
Related: Exoskeletons in Industry
New Developments in the World of Exoskeletons
Japanese Exoskeleton Could Help Users Walk and Run, No Batteries Required
Russian Exoskeleton Suit Turns Soldiers Into Stormtroopers
Tethered, Soft Exosuit Can Reduce Metabolic Cost of Running
Turning Workers Into 'Super Workers' With Robotic Suits
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:03PM
This pushes air up the hose to a hip belt,
I don't think so. Belts haven't been hip in forever.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:41PM
I think the Batman disagreed with you.
And this [emojipedia.org] can't come soon enough.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @12:01AM
Man, if the Unicode Consortium keeps adding dumb emoji like this we'll have enough to do all SoylentNews stories in nothing but emoji.
🇯🇵 🤖 🚶 🏃 🔋 🚫
🆕📰 20💀💀💀 🔫👳
🕴🔜45,000,000,000💵 😐📕 ☯
🕵👩🔛🚼🔒
👨✈🎆🌳👶🔚🤕
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Thursday December 03 2015, @12:57AM
I see boxes instead of the unicode characters (except for the 😐☯✈, that displays normally).
Which Debian package should I install to see it correctly?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 03 2015, @02:42AM
I opened the GUI package manager, searching for "emoji" and "utf". lubunicodenames libutf8proc ttf-freefont and noto-fonts-emoji all caught my attention, and after refreshing the page, I can see the emojis above. I'm on arch, Debian may use the same package names, or not, but you should be able to recognize them if the names are different.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday December 03 2015, @02:54AM
I see most of them, but not all.
I resorted to fileformat.info [fileformat.info] to search for the characters I couldn't and see what fonts support them.
E.g. try the u+1f473, pick the character page info and follow the "Fonts that support ...".
or directly go to fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/<char_code>/fontsupport.htm
For the case in example, symbola (most emojies) and it seems that this [debian.org] may be the package you want.
If you can't find a package, tough luck you will need to search for the font and install it manually (and also manually refresh it from time to time).
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:17AM
Couldn't find the package locally, but downloaded it from packages.debian.org, and it worked. Thanks.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:22AM
After installing symbola, I checked fileformat.info like you suggested, and found the font to show the remaining characters. Now even all of dongerlist.com works.
ᕕ( ՞ ᗜ ՞ )ᕗ
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:26AM
ops, forgot to mention: it's "unifont"
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:31AM
Thanks. Seems it's time to refresh my symbola (manual) installation.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @07:39AM
so, are you saying that all space-faring civilizations are doomed to failure because the implied internet technology that comes with it dumbs down people enough to go back to hieroglyphs, effectively ending all literacy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @10:43AM
Ah, you mean medyaglyphs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age [wikipedia.org]