Comment by Piskvorrr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Piskvorrr | Hacker News Reader

TL;DR: No.

A newborn baby is not a CPU+motherboard which just needs to grow the other peripherals and BAM it all just snaps into place, nor is it a tiny adult with fully functional tiny appendages.

A newborn needs to develop all sorts of skills - starting with breathing patterns & sleep patterns, not to mention feeding. Yes, these things become automatic pretty quickly; however, the baby needs to "bootstrap" itself from the absolute basics provided by reflex, iteratively, to more and more complex tasks - it cannot start in the middle of the "technology tree," to use a metaphor from strategic games, as it would lack the underlying capabilities. Muscle coordination (in other words, developing the neural activation patterns whose existence you're presupposing), sensory input (movement w/o vision, very useful) and cross-referencing the inputs/outputs comes much, much later.

Now, with a 6-month-old, that exoskeleton of yours might be actually workable (in theory) - but a newborn? No way at all; your view of human biology is rather cartoonish: we're not starting out with a complete brain which just needs some muscles, the brain develops alongside the rest of the organism.

While I agree with you, its worth noting that newborns do exhibit a walking reflex (that usually disappears after a few weeks). I would not completely rule out the possibility of a newborn walking with an exoskeleton -- the problem seems to be that their muscles cannot support weight or balance.

Cheesy example video, but the first after a quick search: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJIcKkxx7wg

Edit: and now I see that someone has already mentioned this in the other comments.

>the problem seems to be that their muscles cannot support weight or balance.

It does? Newborns can support their own weight when hanging. Most toddlers can support their own weight standing long before they develop the coordination required to walk. Babies lack fine motor control.

Our ancestors, with less complex brains, would have been able to walk shortly after birth, hence the walking reflex.

I suspect the issue is that the complexity of modern human brains delays the formation of the neural circuits required for walking because a whole bunch of complex features are developing at the same time.

I do see your point but still, a newborn cannot support their head by themselves. Having the muscle ability to be able to hold ones head up is a fairly good prerequisite for being able to walk.

Plus it'd be extremely stupid to give someone who is learning basic coordination control over a force that can severely damage things, including him/herself. Not because of potential defects in the exoskeleton, mind you, but because the baby will simply use it to do random things, like punch himself in the face, or scratch, or ... If you give him a tool that makes punching himself in the face fatal, ... well ...

We all know what inevitably happens if you give a 1 year old a stick. Giving them a powerful robot ... just don't.

Just don't.

You could possibly build sanity checks into the exoskeleton. Not at all saying that makes it actually a good idea...

Or you could, perhaps, wait for the user to actually develop their own sanity checks. Just sayin'.

(OTOH, yes, you could theoretically build a transhuman baby into an exoskeleton; this would mean that the baby would learn to exist in the world as if the exoskeleton were a natural part of its body - but such baby would need the exoskeleton forever, as it would learn to control its body very differently than a baby without it)

Yeah, like I said, probably still not actually a good idea. An interesting thought experiment, though.

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