When it comes to wearable technology, the first thing most people probably think of is modern wrist-adorned doodads like Fitbits or the Apple Watch. But there's much more to the wearable story than that. Researchers are hard at work engineering advanced wearable systems that will augment our movements.
These technologies hold the promise to one day return the ability to walk to those suffering from injury and disease, but they might also be used to improve the physicality of the able bodied. Those are some of the goals being sought by a research team at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, which has partnered with the US military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to create textile-based soft robotic exosuits. This technology is still very much in development, but the suits could one day supercharge soldiers' movement in the field.
That's right, super soldiers—of a sort.
"The goal of the warrior web project is to help soldiers who have to carry heavy loads over many miles through crazy conditions," explains Dani Ryan, a Functional Apparel Designer with the Wyss Institute, who stopped by for a segment of PCMag's Q+A series, The Convo. "DARPA is very forward-thinking and seeing if there is a way they could design some kind of augmentation system that soldiers could wear in the field."
The battery-powered soft exosuits the team is developing use a combination of sensors, textiles, and robotic pulleys to add a little more oomph to each step. The suit is fitted with an internal wire that reaches to the back of the heel to provide additional force. The extra pull is triggered by the wearers' own movement (it basically adds muscle power to each step).
This technology has an obvious military benefit, but—as is often the case with advanced military research—the same technology can be used in other areas.
"The other project I'm working on is 'Medexo' [medical exosuits] designed to help people who have a stroke," explains Ryan. "Typically, people who have a stroke on one side of their body—their paretic side—and will have symptoms like 'drop foot,' where when they're walking they might start tripping—they can't push off during their gate system as well as a healthy person might."
Elements of the Medexo technology have been licensed by Israeli biotech firm ReWalk to help in the treatment of stroke patient.
We've seen gigantic robotic exosuits from Amazon and others. These bulky, imposing technologies have an obvious use in manufacturing and warehouse/fulfillment industries (a la Ripley's robot suit in Aliens). But you would never want to wear that in your everyday life, which is exactly why the line of comparatively diminutive soft exosuits is particularly interesting. And this is also where someone like Ryan, who has a fashion background (including stints at Reebok and New Balance), comes in. The tech will eventually live with us throughout the day and will need to be comfortable and stylish (or, at least, not hideous).
These soft exosuits are still very much in the experimental phase, but if they can prove their utility, it won't be long until they will be found on the battlefield, at the rehabilitation clinic, or even at your local retail outlet. The next great digital platform might be the human body.
The Convo is PCMag's interview series hosted by features editor Evan Dashevsky (@haldash). Each episode is broadcast live on PCMag's Facebook page, where viewers are invited to ask guests questions in the comments. Episodes are then posted on our YouTube page and available as an audio podcast, which you can subscribe to on iTunes or the podcast platform of your choice.