Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
High-powered robotic suits like the one seen in Iron Man have long captured the imagination of moviegoers, and now a few wearable robotics products are currently available or in development.
The National Science Foundation recently awarded a major grant to NYU engineer Joo H. Kim to develop robotic exoskeleton technology capable of assisting disabled individuals, heavy labor or military soldiers.
With many current wearable robotics being ill fitting, Kim’s work will focus on developing technology solutions that better conform to the human body. The NYU engineer will also be focusing on robotics for the lower extremities.
Preliminary research plans have Kim using mathematical simulations of functioning and stability control built into the design, producing faster development and improved assistive devices at lower cost.
“The end user’s individual requirements will be considered right from the very beginning–and at each stage of the process,” Kim said. “By providing highly customized design, a reduced design cycle, optimized systems with light weight and natural motion, and improved user comfort and safety, we are bringing exoskeleton technologies to the next level.”
The ramifications for exoskeleton technologies
In a recent op-ed for SFGate, Dov Greenbaum, director of the Zvi Meitar Institute for Legal Implications of Emerging Technologies in Israel, discussed the legal and ethical concerns associated with developing exoskeleton technology.
First, Greenbaum raised the issue of who should have access to this technology, given that it will have a prohibitively high cost.
“As a society, we may need to reconsider able-ness, in light of these and other technological opportunities for overcoming our limitations,” he wrote. He added that lawyers and politicians will probably have to determine if someone who regains function through wearable robotics is still considered disabled.
Greenbaum also discussed the possibility of soldiers wearing exoskeletons in combat situations, saying the suits could save lives.
“In upgrading our soldiers, however, we run the risk of treating them more like machines than humans, further dehumanizing warfare and its very human actors,” he wrote. Greebaum also said supplementing non-disabled individuals also raises ethical issues with respect to performance in industrial settings and on the battlefield.
Finally, Greenbaum wrote about wearable robotics as they relate to liability.
“With the potential for semi-autonomous, or even autonomous, exoskeletons (i.e., those that work with little to no human intervention), courts will need to determine whether a person injured by another in an exoskeleton suit was injured by the semi-independent suit, by the person wearing the suit, or something in between,” he wrote. “These uncertainties will be exacerbated with the continuing development of prosthetic devices implementing brain-computer interfaces that provide for intuitive control of the device through interpreting neural activities of the user. Was the offending action caused by an exoskeleton suit the result of conscious or unconscious thought? Should that make a difference?”
Greenbaum speculated that many of these issues will be ironed out in the regulatory system, with the rest being worked out in the court system.
“(E)xoskeletons raise much more long-standing and complex questions that will eventually force us to redefine how we perceive humanity and self,” he noted.
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