Japan Gets Wearable Robotics To Help Their Elderly Work With Ease
Tokyos Haneda Airport has gone for a unique solution - Hybrid Assist Limb HAL. Partnering with Cyberdyne Robotics the airport is supplying its aging staff with exoskeletons. The exoskeleton is a body model that aids the lower back and the leg region by helping to distribute and carry the weight carried more efficiently.
Japan does not have the young manpower that India does. In fact, last year, only 1 million babies were born in the country. The shocking drop in the birth rate has experts estimating a drop of 20 million in population by 2040. Which is why they are running out of young workers strong enough to do physical labour. Which is, in turn, why the onus is on the elderly to bridge the gap.
One of the sectors severely affected by this drop is aviation. To counter this, Tokyo's Haneda Airport has gone for a unique solution - Hybrid Assist Limb (HAL). Partnering with Cyberdyne Robotics, the airport is supplying its aging staff with exoskeletons to help lift luggage.
Cyberdyne
The exoskeleton is a body model that aids the lower back and the leg region by helping to distribute and carry the weight carried more efficiently. The new HAL suit is a smaller version of the full body suit released back in 2013. It works by receiving bio-electric signals from the waist and the legs of the user, triggering internal pistons.
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It does not replace human effort, but it aims to assist the ones who struggle to lift heavier loads by significantly reducing the effort put in and decreasing strain. According to Cyberdyne, a person weighing 50 kilos will be able to pick up a load of 20 kilos with ease. This weight might not seem much at first, but considering a porter at the airport would need to carry such weight hundreds of times in a day, it can cause severe problems for the aged. Since HAL is super light in weight, it allows smaller women and men to lift heavy objects with comparative ease.
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Running on a battery which lasts a few hours, the suit will work with the autonomous floor robot who are able to carry loads of up to 180 kilos. While the cost of such a gadget is a whopping $1,109 per month, it is a small price to pay for an airport that is struggling to get manpower.
The age of the robot workforce is right around the corner and until then, wearable robotics and exoskeletons is really revolutionising the way we work. Do you think exoskeletons is an idea that can be implemented in India?
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