●Nathan Shiga: September 17

When you get old, you are liable to experience hard-of-hearing and soon enough hard-of-walking. Past age 80, your knees will gradually start refusing to function smoothly enough to allow walking at ease. It depends on individuals, but you are liable all the same to feel those symptoms sooner or later.

Now, this episode has to do with those unfortunate folks with substantial hard-of-walking and a venture enterprise in Ibaraki that has come up with a unique robot suit to help them walk about. CYBERDYNE is the enterprise in question run by Ikuo Kudo.

The wearable robot suit is 3 kilos in weight wearable around the waist with a built-in motor that catches electrical signals from the wearer’s brain to aid standing up and down. The number of electrodes is reduced from 8 to 1 to cut down on the overall weight of the suit by a quarter of that of the prototype.

The suit is designated by the government a medical aid device and is ready for marketing this month as the nursing facilities across the nation.

Ikuo Kudo of CYBERDINE believes the robot suit will aid the self-support of the aged and in turn help lighten the burdens on the part of the helper.

Meanwhile, automakers have their own projects ongoing to develop robots to aid the aged. The government is ready to provide funds to expedite R&D.

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