2. WHAT IS H.A.L. ?
H.A.L. is the brain child of Dr. Sankai of the Tsukubuka
University in Japan, and the robotics company Cyberdine.
H.A.L. is a type of powered exoskeleton that has two applications.
H.A.L. has just a leg application to assist in activities such as
physical therapy.
H.A.L. has a full bodied suit to aid in extreme lifting and
reducing fatigue on the body.
3. H.A.L WAS DESIGNED SOLELY FOR THE
PURPOSE OF TAKING SOME OF THE
STRAIN OFF OF PEOPLE WORKING OR
LIVING IN THESE TYPES OF
ENVIRONMENTS.
Hospitals
Rehabilitation Centers
Hospital lifting staff
People who have been confined to a wheelchair all of their
lives.
Factories
5. HOW DOES H.A.L. WORK ?
• H.A.L. works through a series of
two F.R.F. sensors placed right
above the kneecap on the leg,
which responds directly with your
brain’s processing features.
• Basically when your brain tells
one of your limbs to move, the
sensors pick up on the impulse
within a fraction of a second and
the suit takes over.
6. In 2012 Cyberdine released a new type of
H.A.L. suit to the industrial worker.
The new 132 pound suit which is virtuously
weightless to the wearer because of the suit’s
ability to support itself, is now helping protect
the clean up workers at the Fukushima
Nuclear Power Plant, and increases the
productivity of the wearer.
This suit is equipped with
Tungsten and five fans to help
keep the wearer cool.
7. H.A.L. is powered by a(n)
AC100V type battery
pictured below.
This battery is 210g which
is roughly 0.0462 pounds.
8.
9. H.A.L. will eventually be a
massed produced item, and
will be available for not as
much as you would expect.
The base price for H.A.L
will be around
10. H.A.L. is not the only type of exoskeleton suit on the market.
The Military division are fast producing these exo-suits in order
to benefit their soldiers.
A prime example of this would be a new suit under the
development of Lockheed-Martin, called “HULC”
11. The Lockheed-Martin’s “HULC” is a much more flexible
unit compared to the “HAL” unit.
The “HULC” unit weighs 150 pounds but actually makes
up for the weight by supporting itself.
12. In 2006 Seiji Uchida who has been paralyzed for nearly two
decades piggybacked with his friend with the assistance of
the H.A.L. leg units, up the side of the Swiss Peak only to
turn back 500 feet from the base so they would not miss the
last cable car down the mountain.
13. In March,2011 Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Power
plant lost 3 of it’s 6 Nuclear reactors to a tsunami
and earthquake causing the 3 reactors to spew
Nuclear waste over the town .
This disaster caused 150,000 people to evacuate
their homes, and some are still not able to return
still until this day.
14. CYBERDYNE Inc. is a venture firm aiming to
utilize accomplishments by Prof. Sankai and his
laboratory at University of Tsukuba.
“We strongly believe that technologies should be
designed for the benefits of human kind.”
-Cyberdyne
15. H.A.L. is the future to better human assisted
Review
living, and is currently only available to the
people of Japan, but one day it may be massed
produced to the world.
Even though it is not possible to completely
take human equation out of robotics, it is
possible to better humankind through the
fusion of robotics and human abilities.
