Will Exoskeletons Give Us Superpowers?
All the strength of a body builder, with none of the body oil. We test out the latest bionic enhancements in the first episode of FLUX. Continue reading Will Exoskeletons Give Us Superpowers?
Category Archives: bionic
Need A Hand? How About Two?
A helping hand goes a long way to accomplishing a task. Sometimes that comes in the form of a friend, and sometimes it’s a pair of robotic hands attached to your arm.
Italian startup [Youbionic] have developed this pair of 3D printed hands which aim to extend the user’s multi-tasking capacity. Strapped to the forearm and extending past the user’s natural hand, they are individually operated by flexing either the index or ring fingers. This motion is picked up by a pair of flex sensor strips — a sharp movement will close the fist, while a slower shift will close …read more
Hackaday Prize Entry: Economical Bionic Leg
When it comes to high-tech bionic legs for amputees, all the cool stuff is titanium, carbon fiber or other, more exotic materials. With carbon fiber “blades” all the rage, it’s easy to forget that simpler technologies still work, and could be made to work even better with the addition of some inexpensive electronics. The Economical Bionic Leg project is the result of that idea.
Project creators [PremJ20] and [G.Vignesh] aren’t kidding about bringing the cost of these bionic legs down. The target goal is $60 per, with stainless steel and silicon rubber as a cheaper alternative to carbon fiber — …read more
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Head-Up Display Augments Bionic Turtle’s Reality
There’s a harsh truth underlying all robotic research: compared to evolution, we suck at making things move. Nature has a couple billion years of practice making things that can slide, hop, fly, swim and run, so why not leverage those platforms? That’s the idea behind this turtle with a navigation robot strapped to its back.
This reminds us somewhat of an alternative universe sci-fi story by S.M. Stirling called The Sky People. In the story, Venus is teeming with dinosaurs that Terran colonists use as beasts of burden with brain implants that stimulate pleasure centers to control them. While the …read more
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Pneumatic Rotary Vane Joints Lend A Gentle Helping Hand
Festo has released a video showing the workings of their BionicCobot, a pneumatic robot arm developed for lending a helping hand to humans at a workstation. Since it works intimately with humans, it has to be safe, producing no harmful movements, and reacting when encountering an obstacle such as an arm containing delicate human bone. This it does using pneumatics and rotary vanes.
The arm has seven degrees of freedom, three in the shoulder, one in the elbow, another in the lower arm, and two in the wrist. But you won’t find any electric motor or gears. Instead each contains …read more
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Hedberg is a Bionic Hand Made From a Single Keurig
Developing into a modern hacker and tinkerer requires a lot of things: electronics study, programming knowledge, and patience (among many other things). But, the most important quality a hacker can have is curiosity. The desire to see how things work is what drives most budding hackers towards the dismantling of family appliances and electronic gadgets.
Many end up scavenging parts from the things around the house for their first projects. But, with money and more ambitious builds comes the need to purchase parts off the shelf. There is, however, something to be said for the ingenuity that comes with building …read more
Continue reading Hedberg is a Bionic Hand Made From a Single Keurig
Canada’s Military Spent $1M on Hydraulic Knee Braces to Make Soldiers Stronger
Soldiers will be able to lift more and hit the ground harder. Continue reading Canada’s Military Spent $1M on Hydraulic Knee Braces to Make Soldiers Stronger