Autonomous wearable robot arms turn you into a Doc Ock, sort of

Some of us do wish that there are more hours in a day, while others wish we had more limbs so that we are able to get more things done throughout the day. Federico Parietti and Harry Asada of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with this pair of semi-autonomous intelligent arms that ought to aid just about anyone in their jobs. All right, you will not quite reach the levels of Doctor Octopus of Spiderman lore just yet, but at least these semi-autonomous arms will extend in front of your body from the hips, where they are strapped to a backpack-like harness which carries the control circuitry. The prototype could be used to assist factory workers in performing tricky DIY tasks.

Dave Barrett, a roboticist and mechanical engineer at Olin College in Needham, Massachusetts, said, “It’s the first time I’ve seen robot arms designed to augment human abilities. It’s bold and out of keeping with anything I’ve ever seen to attach two arms to a human.”

These semi-autonomous limbs were specially designed to learn and hopefully, it can anticipate what their wearer wants in the future. Algorithms in charge of the limbs will be trained first to perform specific tasks. I just hope that there is some form of safety features built into this thing, as the robot arms that are capable of helping us humans are also equally capable of lending a destructive hand, pardon me for the lack of a better word.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Robots
Tags: Robot