Instead of implants under the skin that turned Steve Austin into the $6 million man, the Soft Exosuit fits outside the user’s body. It boosts a soldier’s ability to walk longer distances carrying heavy gear with less fatigue and improved resistance to injury.

Exosuits are a new class of applications for soft robotics. Soft, elastic sensors in an adjustable suit made of nylon, polyester, and spandex provide well-timed bursts of power intended to reduce the energy a soldier uses to walk. The suit mimics the action of the wearer’s leg muscles and tendons. Sensors embedded in the insoles of a boot send a signal to a computer processor in an actuator box on a backpack or waist belt. Cables transmit force to the joints. The system is continuously monitoring various data signals, including the suit tension, the position of the wearer, be they walking, stooping, or crawling. All the components, including a battery that gives out 50 watts of power for 4 hours, weigh about 13 pounds.

The US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering with a $2.9 million contract from their Warrior Web program.

The Warrior Web  says troops patrolling for long periods in rugged, hilly terrain usually are carrying 100 or more pounds of equipment. Musculoskeletal injuries can occur while bending, crawling or running, especially to ankles, knees and lumbar spine. Fatigue is common. The suit worn beneath the uniform promises to enhance strength and endurance of the wearer.

In the lab, scientists monitor the biomechanics and physiological implications from people interacting with these types of machines. This exosuit differs from others in that it is soft, not rigid as in the past.

Robot suit and its human wearer are monitored in the laboratory

Conor Walsh is Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Walsh is also a Core Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard. Additionally, he founded the Harvard Biodesign Lab. He illustrates the operating principle of the robotic suit with this explanation: If you have a person in a swing, and “you start them swinging, then you just have to give a little tap at the right time, and the swing will keep moving.” Similarly, if a person begins walking, swinging their legs, the sensors give a boast of energy to the participating muscles.

Mapping coordinates for the Exosuit

Team Leader Walsh is working with Wyss Institute faculty Robert Wood, Yong-Lae Park, and George Whitesides; Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Harvard University graduate students and postdoctoral fellows; Terry Ellis and Ken Holt of Boston University’s College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences; and Sang-bae Kim of MIT. New Balance known best for their Made in America athletic shoes provides expertise in textile and apparel innovation.
The military isn’t the only segment of the population that may profit from the wearable robotic suit. Alternative versions of the suit could eventually assist those with limited mobility, such as individuals who have suffered a stroke or have cerebral palsy.

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Harvard University researchers are busy improving RoboBee, a substitute robotic method of pollination, because honey bees aren’t doing the job they used to. Bees that have always pollinated plants are disappearing. Without pollination, crops will also disappear leaving our dinner plates empty.

Many food producing plants depend on bees flitting from blossom to blossom collecting and depositing pollen which causes the plant to fruit. Without this transfer, there would be fewer crops to harvest. One third of what we eat, including apples, pumpkins, carrots, sunflowers, blueberries, avocados, and almonds need bees to survive.

Pesticides, disease and parasites have all been blamed for the bee’s demise, but scientists have had little luck determining exactly why the bees are dying. In the interim, creative people have sought alternative methods of doing the bee’s work, from hand pollinating to creating robotic insects to do the dusting.

People try to accomplish what bees have historically done – dusting each blossom with pollen.

In Sichuan China, thousands of villagers climb into their fruit trees to pollinate blossoms by hand using brushes made from chicken feathers dipped into pollen. Each individual blossom must be kissed by the pollen laden brush. This tedious task may be combined with computerized RoboBees if the researchers’ project itself comes to fruition.

RoboBee Schematic

Since last year, improvements have been made to the RoboBee first introduced by a team lead by Robert Wood at Harvard University working in the field of micro-aerial vehicles. The latest version of the robotic insect can carry more weight than previously. Before, it had been impossible to pack everything onto such a small structure and keep it lightweight enough to fly. The robot, hardly larger than a US quarter, must navigate between the leaves and branches of plants to locate and inseminate their blossoms.

Team member Kevin Ma explained that the RoboBee has to carry flight muscles, sensors, and a battery while weighing less than a gram. Ma and his colleagues intend for it to be completely autonomous so that it operates without tethers or a pilot. Contrary to a real honey bee, RoboBee’s only task would be to disseminate pollen. It would not be creating honey in the hive.

Making a robotic insect with such stringent requirements is slow work. It requires creating smart sensors that mimic a bee’s eyes and antennae, designing hardware and software to control and monitor flight so that the robot will be able to sense objects and companion devices while making simple decisions to find and service each waiting blossom.

Ma predicted that it will take 10-15 more years of research and government funding to make the artificial bee functional. The National Science Foundation helped subsidize the project with a $10 million grant. The research team still needs to make it perform tasks successfully, increase its battery life, improve its flying speed, and address issues of wireless communication.

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