可穿戴机械：让人类变成钢铁侠

    与此同时，本田公司(Honda)生产的Walk Assist正在芝加哥康复研究院（Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago）接受测试。（本田公司尚未批露这款设备的零售价。）这款设备是为那些还没有完全失去自主行走能力，但因为某些原因需要辅助的人设计的——比如老年人。

    尽管几家公司都拥有不错的发展前景，但格里辛认为，由于医疗行业历来是政府重点监管的对象，可穿戴机械设备的重大突破应该不会首先发生在这个领域。他表示：“创新一般发生在你可以快速行动的领域。我认为这个市场的‘大创新’不会发生在医疗行业。”

    工业

    有些公司已经发现，可穿戴机械设备可以用来给从事繁重劳动的工人减负。比如有些工人整天需要不停地蹲下再站起，或者要每天要扛很重的东西走来走去。本田就是这样一家公司。早在2008年，本田就推出了一款试验性设备。本田北美分公司助理副总裁杰弗里•史密斯表示：“当前最大的挑战是让这款设备能够适用于各种体型。它不光是为上年纪的人设计的，而是为所有人设计的。”

    史密斯表示，材料和电池工艺的进步，对本田开发这款设备起了很重要的作用——不仅因为它延长了电池寿命，同时也保障了它能提供持续一致的功率水平和性能表现。

    此外，这款试验性设备更加符合“可穿戴机械设备”的称号，因为它为用户提供了额外的肢体，而不是像外骨骼系统那样只是强化现有肢体的力量。为了应对熟手工人老龄化的问题，航空业巨头波音公司(Boeing)委托麻省理工学院（MIT）机械工程师，博士研究生弗雷德里科•帕里亚蒂从事这项研究。

    帕里亚蒂和MIT达贝洛夫实验室的其他研究人员发现，波音工厂的许多工作都需要两人合作完成，其中一名工人进行技术工作，另外一个熟手工人几乎只是在打下手，比如扶着某个零件。因此，该团队构建了一个能充当“第三只手”的机器人，它可以从事一些技术性不高的任务，让另一名熟练工人去做更高级的工作。这个团队面临的最大挑战就是软件：由于工厂车间噪音太大了，导致机器人无法接收语音指令，因此它必须学会如何接受熟练工人的指令。

    帕里亚蒂表示：“我们有很多用来记录人体动作的传感器。那么如何从这些数据中判断这个人的意图？”目前这套MIT与波音合作的系统仍在研发中，可能两年后就可投入应用。

    意大利比圣安娜高等学校的感知机器人实验室（Percro）推出的Body Extender，是工业应用辅助设备中最复杂的设备之一。这套外骨骼系统看起来有点像漫画书里的未来机甲【让人不由得想起《机动战士高达》(Mobile Suit Gundam Wing)）。该公司称，它可以极大地提高一个人的力量，最高可以提高至10倍，很适合用来搬运一个人抬不动的材料（比如飞机的机身壁板）。

    Another device, Honda’s Walk Assist, is currently under trial at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. (The Japanese company has yet to disclose an expected retail price.) The device is built for fully ambulatory people who may need assistance for one reason or another, such as the elderly.

    Despite the promising start, Grishin believes the regulated nature of the medical market makes it unlikely that breakthroughs will happen there. “Innovation happens when you can move very quickly,” he says. “I think the big innovation in this market will not come from medical.”

    Industrial

    A number of companies see opportunity in using robotics to ease strain on factory workers who, for example, need to squat repeatedly throughout the day or bear weight while walking. Honda is one of them, and introduced an experimental device for the purpose in 2008. “At the moment, the biggest engineering challenge is in ensuring that the device will work the same way for every body type that may need to use it,” says Jeffrey Smith, an assistant vice president at Honda of North America. “This is not just a device made for the elderly, but it was designed with all of society in mind.”

    Smith said that advances in materials and battery technology have been important in the development of Honda’s device—not just for extending its battery life but in providing consistent power levels and performance.

    Another, experimental device is more of a wearable robot than an exoskeleton in that it gives its user additional limbs rather than increasing his or her strength. FredericoParietti, a mechanical engineer and doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is working on research commissioned by the aerospace company Boeing, which faces the problem of its highly-skilled factory workforce aging.

    Parietti and other researchers at MIT’s d’Arbeloff Laboratory observed that many Boeing factory jobs were two-person jobs where one worker performed skilled work while another well-trained worker merely assisted, such as holding an object in place. The team began building a robot that could work as a set of extra limbs and perform the less-skilled tasks in a two-person job, freeing up the other skilled worker to do higher-level work. The team’s biggest challenge is software: the robot can’t take voice commands because the factory floor is too noisy, and so must learn to take the lead from the skilled worker.

    “We have so many sensors that are recording human motion,” Parietti says. “So how do you extract from those data what is the human’s intention?” The MIT-Boeing system is still in development and may be ready for deployment in two years.

    Among the most complex assist devices for industrial use is the Body Extender, the work of the Perceptual Robotics Laboratory (better known as Percro) at the ScuolaSuperioreSant’Anna near Pisa, Italy. The exoskeleton, which resembles the futuristic machinery in comic books (Mobile Suit Gundam Wing comes to mind), is designed to greatly increase a person’s strength—up to 10 times, according to the company, which would benefit the handling of materials (e.g. aircraft fuselage panels) too heavy for a single human to carry or position.