islamabad - A new wearable robotic arm turns users into a superhero by giving them an extra hand when doing tasks - and the chance to smash through walls.
The waist-mounted hydraulic arm has three degrees of freedom, moves nine feet per second and can pick up objects weighing up to 11 pounds.
The system itself weighs about the same as a human arm and is controlled using a smaller version of the robot operated by a second person standing nearby. Researchers have shown the technology can paint, wash windows, hand tools to a human worker and play badminton, along with smashing through a wall on a construction site.
The robot was created by researchers at Université de Sherbrooke in Canada and is known as a ‘supernumerary robotic arm,’ which is a wearable robot that provides a human with an additional limb. The device is equipped with magnetorheological clutches and hydrostatic transmissions with the goal of ‘mimicking the performance of a human arm in a multitude of industrial and domestic applications.’