Powered Exoskeletons; What's stopping us?
krschultz: Research on this is ongoing at my college and I've taken a grad class on it/looked into a lot of research on it so I feel like I can comment.It is EXTREMELY difficult. I am in the last semester of undergrad degrees in computer science & mechanical engineering. I have worked on path finding, AI, computer vision and a bunch of mech engineering stuff. This was the hardest topic I've ever covered, by far.At my college the professor in charge of research and his grad students have had success for lower body exoskeletons and are just now starting to work on upper body ones.It is not just some motors on a frame. Realize the person inside the frame has limits on their joint motion and a certain gait, if the motors do not correctly follow the prescribed gait you could seriously injure the person wearing it. The human body has many more degrees of freedom than you would expect, it is not simple hinge joints.Plus there is the density issue, batteries, motors, computers, frames must be made light but strong and durable etc.And then there is the interface, how does the exoskeleton know when you want to move your arm/leg down. Is it pushing down on the exoskelton because you have no strength and gravity is pulling? Or do you want to put down the glass you are holding or take a step forward?So people out there are trying, it is just really hard.Note that the goal is to rehabilitate people, not replace wheel chairs. After enough time with a lower body exoskeleton and continually lowering the help the skeleton provides until there is basically none, the person slowly regains the ability to walk (in the case of a stroke victim).For the upper body exoskeleton the goal is to provide help for those with muscular dystrophy or the like, i.e. where there is no solution today.