Gadget watch - need a spare pair of legs?
Have you ever felt so knackered after a night out or shopping trip that you felt your own legs didn’t have the energy to take you home? Did you wish that you could just magic yourself to your comfy sofa? Well, the boffins over at Honda have been dabbling in some robot magic and have produced these rather interesting looking robot legs.
They will reduce the load on your legs by supporting your weight as you walk. You just sit on the unicycle-type seat and the leg frames bend like knees. They run on two motors which are controlled by signals from the sensors inside the shoes. It all sounds great but I must say that when I first saw those pictures, I did wonder how the boys might fare…
The legs were initially intended for assembly line workers (to enable them to stay in crouched positions all day) and the elderly (the aging population in Japan - Honda’s mother ship - being another inspiration for the invention). But we could soon see these chained up outside pubs and shopping centres. However, a word of advice, since these legs haven’t been invented with GPS yet, you may also want to invest in a sat nav and make sure you always have a mobile phone at hand : )
Tags: Gadget Watch, gps, honda, mobile phone, robot legs, sat nav
Blog posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 7:06 pm under gadgets. Leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
Don't miss an article, click here to get DWTB by RSS
Michael Gaudet Says:
November 17th, 2008 at 3:24 am
My daughter has displaced hips, won’t go into medical detail, other than to say that we were thinking about a device just like these robot legs a few years ago. We googled the idea and found nothing. I think this is a great innovation. The good news is that our daughter has now fought back and enjoys pretty much total mobility. Beats being confined to a wheelchair! Bet she would find this invention pretty cool as well.