An 'Exosuit' That Boosts Endurance on the Trail | Hacker News Reader

An 'Exosuit' That Boosts Endurance on the Trail

npr.org

146 pointsmelling94 comments

For those looking to learn more the full study is linked from the NPR report: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6454/668

"We show that a portable exosuit that assists hip extension can reduce the metabolic rate of treadmill walking at 1.5 meters per second by 9.3% and that of running at 2.5 meters per second by 4.0% compared with locomotion without the exosuit. These reduction magnitudes are comparable to the effects of taking off 7.4 and 5.7 kilograms during walking and running, respectively, and are in a range that has shown meaningful athletic performance changes."

Note that "The entire exosuit weighs 5.0 kg, with 91% of the total system mass carried at the waist," so it might be a few more revisions until this is very practical, but it's still super interesting work!

Are you subtracting 5KG from 7.4? I don't think you should. The tests take the weight into account, given the test subjects are wearing the device. IOW, if the device was weightless we would expect energy decrease corresponding to a 12.4kg weight reduction.

I actually skimmed through the paper but wasn't able to determine if it did take the weight of the exo into account. Do you have a reference for how it specifies that?

Also, I saw the BOM in the supplementary material (using 2 x 500g 3700mAh 6S LiPos; 160Wh total), but did not see data on what the range/battery life actually was in the system. That seems like that should be in there somewhere, but doesn't look like it's mentioned anywhere in the paper.

It disappoints, but doesn't surprise me yo see the immediate links to military use in this article and elsewhere.

I was recently on a trip with my nearly 100 y/o grandmother, who up until this point has resisted using a wheelchair. Walking, and especially stairs ended up being too much and we had to borrow wheelchairs, catch shuttles to get around. If she had even a modest mechanical assist she could have traveled with probably just a cane.

It is inevitable - the military is a good source of funding for technology that can enhance human performance. More often than not, this tech ends up in consumer hands down the pipeline.

It’s actually good news for your grandma: DARPA is relatively keen on turning research into products. Most of their proposals ask about commercialization plans, how you’ll handle regulatory approval, etc. Their goal is to get stuff to a point where the DoD can buy 100,000 of something off the shelf. Other funding agencies (e.g., the NIH) are less interested in that and would rather see more papers and citations.

DARPA is also a bit more adventurous in what they’ll fund. I’m not sure the NIH or NSF would have picked up any of the projects I worked on without preliminary data (which we needed the money to generate so...)

I have a friend with MS who struggling and will soon end up in a wheelchair, priority order from the article:

1. Military 2. "weekend warriors" 3. Help people with medical issues such as multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's disease to move more easily

Formally targeting people with medical issues makes your device a "medical device" and adds extensive certification delays. If you make something that's "totally just for weekend warriors" but it's useful for people with medical issues, they.. can still use it, but since it's not being marketed as a "medical device" the onerous FDA approval process isn't invoked.

Daily activity assist devices dodge a bunch of those "extensive certification delays".

For practical examples to examine scalability of prices, consider cooling vests, a vest you wear that circulates cooler water to keep you comfy.

Weekend warrior products run around $200. I am toying with the idea of buying this or making my own to take hikes in hot weather. Strictly hobby/fun use.

"CoolShirt(tm)" products for operating room surgeons to wear under lead vests or whatever are probably more reliable, easier to autoclave, likely more durable, but cost $1500. I don't know why surgeon's need lead vests. Alien autopsies I guess.

I can't find the price for cooling machines for surgical patients but I imagine the liability insurance would triple the cost of the surgeon's clothing, maybe $4500 for a medical product? OF course most of the time patients would have an ice towel thrown on them not a wearable vest, but whatever.

Lead vests are worn to reduce radiation doses from radiological exams performed during surgery (to guide the procedure / monitor something etc.).

Throughout the human history most inventions are aimed to improve military strength initially and find civilian usages later on. Wars, detrimental to individuals, are surely one of the boosters for human race progression.

Other commenters touched on the funding side, but it's also important to remember the military distills much more concrete goals than your grandmother's application. 'Modest mechanical assist' is quite vague, from an engineering perspective. Especially when you have to consider that your grandmother is part of a statistical population. How far would the machine need to go? How inconvenient can it possibly be? What is your grandmother's pre-existing physical fitness level?

All of these questions are very straightforward in a military application.

Later moving a military-developed device to a medical-use situation is much easier when it has already been engineered for a much more specific use-case.

Seconded. My parents are in their 90's and I'd be first in line if I could buy one.

I've seen many of these be announced over the years but not one has come to market, whether for the military, the elderly, or the handicapped. It makes me wonder of there is some common problem with these devices that is not easily solved.

Long distance hiker here. This is not useful on the trail on two fundamental levels:

-energy is seldom the limiting factor in high mileage days. Typically it is a combination of joint pain and feet swell/bruising. A robot will simply remove some of your control over those primary factors.

- the chemical storage of energy in batteries is nowhere close to human efficiency, so you will never pay for the weight of this thing. Seriously, we drill holes in our toothbrush handle to get total base equipment weight < 8 lbs. It is only at these weights that we come close to our limits. Maybe a day hike on one battery would still have benefit, but one-shot day hikes have nothing to do with endurance hiking.

Well, soldiers carry over 10 times the weight you're carrying; the increased weight might be a bigger problem than joint and foot pain (not to mention fatigue from fighting, or being up for 2 days crossing enemy territory).

Wow, some people-not-even-worth-of-insults have downvoted your perfectly fine and informative comment. 8 lbs is not even the load of typical long-distance hiker. It's only very small minority who have those minuscule loads, and their rationale is most often than not just lifestyle choice. I have done hundreds of continuous miles with about 60 lbs many times over the years and experienced no joint problems (this is very personal thing). My feet tend to suffer most in the long run even with good boots so I typically limit the distance covered in a day to 20 miles.

In the army we made 40 miles with about 80 lbs load with basically no rest and that was tough but doable (and not even tough compared to what some other people must go through in the army). Heck, the basic assault rifle we were issued weighted that 8 lbs. That is just ridiculous load for hiking.

I honestly thought that people drilling their toothbrush handles did not actually exist. I have heard numerous times someone joking that "choosing low weight equipment or no some equipment at all can be beneficial but once you start drilling your toothbrush handles it's time to stop" implying that no-one actually drills them. I have always hiked without toothbrush (I used to forget it, nowadays I just don't bother, still having perfect tooth though).

Another long distance hiker and mountaineer chiming in. I don't agree with your points, but moreover, I don't think this is intended as a hiking aid to be sold at REI. Like the article says, it could be beneficial for soldiers with very heavy loads or for rehabilitation / physical therapy. In that respect, I think this is a great, innovative medical device.

I think it would help more to regulate body temperature.

The body works very efficiently if you keep the core temperature down.

https://news.stanford.edu/2017/12/27/cooling-glove-helps-ath...

I was expecting a new evolution of the unpowered exosuits like [1] that have similar performance enhancement without needing motors and batteries. This is interesting, but the gains seem like they will be minimal for the weight addition until battery tech improves significantly.

[1] https://www.embs.org/scientists-develop-an-unpowered-exoskel...

Idle thought: Is a bicycle an unpowered exoskeleton? What if you clip in to it?

Do you ride on it, or does it ride on you? Is an exoskeleton a vehicle?

Car is more of an exoskeleton in that regard. When you put on the seatbelt, you're wearing the car.

>the gains seem like they will be minimal

The article and published study quantify the gains:

>The suit weighs about 11 pounds. The team's research, published Thursday in the journal Science, finds that a person wearing this suit expended 9.3% less energy walking and 4% less energy running, compared with wearing no suit.

>That's the equivalent of shedding 16 pounds of weight while walking or 12 pounds while running.

I wouldn't call these "minimal".

Yes, I saw the stats and still think "minimal" is exactly correct. If you read my link, the unpowered version showed an 8% metabolic rate reduction while running. If you put batteries and motors on something, I would expect the gains to be quite a bit better than that for it to be practical.

Does anyone remember those ...I don't know what to call them, they attached to your legs, and had curved metal bands that you stood on, about a meter off the ground, and the bands were springy. Wearing a pair of these things you could run at some crazy speed, bounding down the street.

I can't think of any search terms that aren't too generic.

You mean air trekkers?

https://www.air-trekkers.com/product-page/copy-of-copy-of-ai...

The Bionic Boot? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5V356k-9a8&t=300

Look for "running stilts"

Jumping stilts - apparently also known as bocking/powerbocking:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_stilts

Long Fall Boot https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Long_Fall_Boot

https://thehustle.co/bionic-boot/

Powerbocking. I worked with a guy in 2010 who had them. He could run as fast as his daughter could bike. Said falling over was pretty dangerous at speed.

AH! Thank you all!

Sort of OT, but I can never seem to get the text-only npr.org to work for articles on HN, it just redirects me back to the text site homepage... Are only a subset of articles available on it?

Plain text version: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=751096093

This is fascinating. It never occurred to me to mechanically boost running at the hip/thighs level, I was always imagining the boost happening on the lower part of the legs.

Long-distance running is more hip and thigh intensive than anything else, so it makes sense to me (an armchair expert).

Break-even? It weighs 11lbs, and is the equivalent of reducing a runner's weight by 12lbs. So all this gadgetry to effectively lose 1 pound?

No, the 12lb figure takes its own weight into account.

Really? I didn't see that mentioned.

You can infer it easily enough, the weights are based on the reduction in energy use. It doesn't say that the reduction in energy use is like shedding 1 pound while running, it says it's like shedding 12 pounds while running.

The coolest part, in my opinion, is the exterior cabling. My mind is spinning with alternative configurations to do lots of different things passively using this technique.

Doesn't that defeat the entire point of fitness training?

As the article highlights, the main target are military and medical applications.

Ebikes are popular and this could be for the same reasons, i.e. unfit but still enjoy getting outside and having fun.

I read an article recently talking about how e-bike users get the same amount of exercise as normal bikers because they tend to ride farther and more frequently. Same thing would likely happen with this.

link to article?

I think it’s probably this link which has been in the news recently https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S259019821930017X

Please don't linke to elsevier after all they have "done" for the scientific community.

Feel free not to follow the links - but please don’t tell others what to do and not do.

It was a plea not an order and I will do that every other day again.

Politely asking people to stop supporting industries that hurt society is one of the ways we make society better; he asked, not told.

Ironically you are doing the exact same thing, politely asking them to stop doing something you don't like.

Maybe it would've been more constructive to link to the sci-hub copy of the paper, rather than complaining?

Asking somebody to stop supporting terrible institutions isn't complaining. Maybe you could help them find the link instead of complaining that they didn't?

The article measured time and distance, but not calories.

well there has to be a limit to that surely, because there are people who don't have e-bikes and bike everywhere. There's only so much biking one can possibly do no matter the assistance, because of the need for sleep and the limitations of a mortality.

I've seen e-biker users absolutely blast past me headed up hills, not even breathing hard. They may get the same "amount" of exercise, but not definitely not the same quality.

If you have equipment that allows you to exert yourself and you've able to exert yourself to maximum capacity as any similar piece of equipment for that sport, yes, you'll get just as good a workout, but the reality is that once you have assistance you're most likely not exerting yourself as much because it's not required or because the assistance is allowing you to go further with less effort, but you don't exercise for as long because your route is of fixed length.

I could totally see that. I live in an area with lots of very steep hills which would be murder to bike up, so I just don't bike. I never even considered that I could just get an E-bike to deal with them and then start biking everywhere.

I can see it making a difference to people starting an exercise regimen who would otherwise be discouraged by how far they were able to go (e.g. not being able to manage the full evening walk with their family). It may also be useful in physical therapy to help people who are not quite to the point of being able to do the exercises on their own.

The incorrect implicit assumption being that everyone who walks/runs outside or is on a trail/hike is doing it for fitness.

I get your point about walking but running? Every personal reason to be running outdoors ultimately ties back to the exertion involved. For example, running to "clear one's mind" is predicated on the effect physical exertion, cardio exercise in particular, has in calming/resetting/clarifying one's state of mind. I guess I could have clarified my original point better as I meant it more in terms of someone choosing to derive personal benefits from physical exertion.

It looks like it's built for the military but you raise an interesting point. Maybe someone could build a suit to make it slightly more difficult to run without creating additional ligament strain.

then why not run faster or further? regarding the ligament strain - this contraption adds 5kg to your weight, so i'd say there's some (tiny) additional ligament strain. i.e. the suit would just be a runners back pack weighting 5kg. fill it with water and food and you get a lightening load over time/distance too.

If you had a suit that could help increase intensity, you'd have way more possibilities. For example, let's say you wanted to train for a 5k. Generally, you mix interval days with just running 5k's. Those 5k days, you're going to be running as fast as you can at that distance already. If you had something to make it harder but still the same distance, you essentially feel lighter on race. It's a completely different feeling than just trying to run faster. People use weight vests or ankle weights for these things but they cause long term damage.

Generally, the best thing to do now to accomplish the same feeling is running on sand or inclines.

Wear a weight-vest. (Although that's probably going to increase "ligament-strain" somewhat, but I don't think it's possible to make something physically harder and not increase ligament-strain.)

That's the problem with weight vests. Even obesity, in general, is a good example of how increased weight causes joint pains.

It simply allows you to go further and/or faster for the same effort.

That might be reason enough, but another very interesting use case is when people of unequal ability wish to exercise or travel together.

We'll probably have similar competitions with body augmentations at some point

I wonder where the power comes from? How long does it last?

That's an interesting question.

Philosophically speaking, if the power comes from the wearer's actions, the exosuit would be basically redirecting power that's internal to the wearer, making more efficient use of it. If that's the case, in a sense it would serve a similar purpose as a bicycle (more efficient use of leg power), except the bicycle isn't very well adapted to rough terrain.

Note that this thought is completely speculative. I haven't read the research paper yet. I probably won't understand the paper even if I tried. I'm not in that field.

The article mentions that you have to turn it on, so I'm guess it has an external power source, like a rechargable battery.

I think that’s very likely.

Speaking of rechargeable battery, one idea that has crossed my mind is wether there is wasted energy during walking or running that can be recovered to recharge the battery.

I am thinking of a power generator in shoes so you don't waste the downward energy

Isn't that what propels you in the first place?

Your feet aren't made from rubber and you aren't bouncing on them when walking; you're dampening the impact shock. This suggests the energy of the "downstroke" is being wasted.

Achilles tendon is elastic in a way that does store downstroke energy, to release it later during the same step as weight moves forward. The energy saved is considerable and making use of this when running instead of dropping heel first gives unbelievable results in distance before exhaustion.

(Basically every tendon is this way, hence why it's a bad idea to stretch dynamically as you're just creating useless tendon fatigue, instead doing either static stretching, plyo, or explosive iso)

https://www.marksdailyapple.com/why-training-your-tendons-is...

Doesn't the subsequent push from your legs propel you?

The Supplementary Materials [0] contains an Excel file containing the Bill of Materials.

The power source seems to be surprisingly small. 2x 3.7 Ahr 6s LiPo Batteries.

[0] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2019/08/14/365....

3.7Ah * (6 * 3.7w) * 2 = 25,4W * 2 = 50,8W. That is a small amount. My calculations was off by a magnitude. Spotlight calculator is acting weird.

Does it have some sort of impact cushioning with regen? You might only need a small store of its mostly being recharged by the regen.

(No I haven't read the OP.)

How long until I can go full Elysium?

I’m amazed/skeptical that science could add something to millions of years of evolution and make it more efficient.

It already has: hip/knee replacements, surgeries to repair where human body couldn't do so well, antibiotics to supplement the immune system, immune-boosters to boost it, iodine added to salt, sunglasses, sunscreen... There are literally hundreds of ways science is adding to our evolution by improving our bodies' biochemistry.

I’ve heard Titanium (like used n joint replacements) is actually weaker than bones. It’s better than not having the surgery, but you are not Wolverine.

You can't really compare bone and titanium in terms of strength. Bone is strong in compression but weak in tension and extremely weak in shear. Titanium is slightly weaker in compression but dramatically stronger in tension and shear.

Bone works great until it fails catastrophically (ie it fractures, breaks, and shatters) while titanium will begin bending long before it breaks. The latter is generally preferred in engineering structures, but since a human can heal its bones, the sudden failure is an acceptable compromise for consistent performance even at high loads.

Finally, bone weakens as we age, as does the body's ability to heal itself. Eventually wear and tear will make joints highly uncomfortable and the potential damage from otherwise minor injuries significantly greater. Titanium holds up well in the body over human timespans, and our ability to replace titanium components far exceeds our ability to artificially regenerate bone.

There are good reasons why evolution favored a composite like bone for our structural elements, but if you could magically replace your skeleton with one made of titanium once you were past your prime, it would be an unambiguous upgrade.

There are many prima facie examples, clean water, vaccinations, prenatal care...

Shoes. Antibiotics. Etc.

Take an anatomy class, and you'll be amazed at how poorly configured human knees, lower back, appendix, vagus nerve, etc. are.

Evolution wasn't able to develop li-ion batteries and carbon tubing (or whatever this suit is made out of).

Evolution is where this stuff came from.

Microprocessors, for example, are not a result of creation science.

Civilizations that invented computers and electronics used to be more successful than other civilizations at reproducing and everything else. Used to.

Why aren't there any animals with wheels? Evolution doesn't guarantee optimal solutions.

Evolution is a game of risk and reward - there's no piece of biology that is optimal, it is all 100% "all things considered, good enough". We're in a place where we don't have to balance those same energy/material concerns on a biological scale anymore, and can introduce energy sources that don't place nice with biology.

Evolution is an iterative process and _every iteration_ has to be able to live and reproduce. It's limited by what it can do.

Like, just look at laryngeal nerve. It's pretty dumb that the nerve has to go around the collarbone. But it's not surprising when you think about the iterative nature of evolution. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Laryngeal_nerve

And let's not even talk about the size of human skulls and maternal death in child birth.

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