anonymfus 6 years ago

>a shirt-like wearable device designed to correct poor posture

>So just like you would wrap a robotic skin around an object, you can also wrap it around yourself. One of the demos that we've created is showing the robotic skin on an upper body garment using the sensors in the scan to track posture, and then pulsing actuators when you pass a certain posture threshold, to communicate with the wearer that they should sit back up.

"Living tissue inside a metal endoskeleton" quoting that animated Doctor Who and Terminator crossover called "The ExTerminator".

  • jacobush 6 years ago

    inside endoskeleton?

    • ghkbrew 6 years ago

      So... bone marrow

  • bitwize 6 years ago

    I was thinking Iron Man suit myself.

    • anonymfus 6 years ago

      Well in a few origin stories Cybermen were actually created as prosthetics first and that was my first association but then I thought that I would rather tvtrope HN audience into watching a dalek train part of youtube.

  • jaclaz 6 years ago

    endo? Maybe exo.

    • anonymfus 6 years ago

      "I just realized how weird that is" quoting the same video.

Grue3 6 years ago

I can't be the only one who wanted that toy horse to actually walk. It was underwhelming when it barely moved.

s512783 6 years ago

I'm really struggling to see how this could be useful in space exploration. They claim that the benefit is that it's reconfigurable, so you can send less stuff to orbit. What they do not talk about is power density - pneumatic actuators do really bad here. Those devices + power packs would have to be huge, way larger than purpose-built electric systems, which would probably destroy the gains from reconfigurability.

But that's based on the youtube video, which is typical marketing-speak. The paper is much more toned down. It's a cool idea, but I don't like when people make exploratory research look like it's anywhere near application stage.

vorpalhex 6 years ago

This is ripe for a horror game (and maybe even partially inspired by one - Five Nights at Freddy's). Just imagine an oozing slime that turns ordinary crap into creepy robots intent on eating you.

  • Raphmedia 6 years ago

    Somewhat similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo

    "Grey goo (also spelled gray goo) is a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all biomass on Earth while building more of themselves,[1][2] a scenario that has been called ecophagy ("eating the environment", more literally "eating the habitation").[3] The original idea assumed machines were designed to have this capability, while popularizations have assumed that machines might somehow gain this capability by accident."

    • robotrout 6 years ago

      There is some of this in the "Bobiverse" trilogy which I very highly recommend. Funny and Smart.

  • maxsilver 6 years ago

    > This is ripe for a horror game. (snip) Just imagine an oozing slime that turns ordinary crap into creepy robots intent on eating you.

    (minor spoilers) That's pretty close to what https://somagame.com/gallery.html is about

gmueckl 6 years ago

I cannot access the paper proper. What is tha actual actuator made out of?

  • Confiks 6 years ago

    The current address of SciHub is https://sci-hub.tw/, and the DOI of the paper is 10.1126/scirobotics.aat1853.

    As for the actuators: "One of the implementations used pneumatic actuators integrated into an elastomer substrate, whereas the other used coiled shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators integrated onto a fabric substrate."

baldfat 6 years ago

My wife would buy that t-shirt in a hart beat. She is always concerned about her posture and I bet you there are a ton of other people like her.

leowoo91 6 years ago

Great, now all the waste can turn into a giant spider.

mxuribe 6 years ago

This is much cooler than the exo-skeletons/exo-suits that i imagined after having watched those Alien movies from the 80s/90s!

MrZongle2 6 years ago

That is crazy, amazing, and wonderful.

tomcooks 6 years ago

Onahole mod in 3..2..

transfire 6 years ago

Sex doll applications?

  • apsdsm 6 years ago

    All I saw was robotic dildos.