what the picture below illustrates is the technology used to measure the joint position on the device. A shaft, at least a half inch in diameter and probably larger is held by to iron pillow blocks. These are the blue pieces shown at the center of the shot. The position is measured by a potentiometer, that is a variable resistor on the white circuit board at the left. A lot was made of the fact that the electrical connectors are all RJ11connectors that were removed from older telephones. This is an interesting piece of recycling of fairly generic equipment but the RJ11 is by modern standards a fairly large connector. In modern times there might be a high temptation to use wireless to connect everything and if not wireless to use some form of Ethernet or even to choose a modern micro USB which is widely available for very small amounts of money and takes up significantly less room. More significant, however is a choice of an extremely large and heavy iron pillow block to hold the assembly. These were chosen because they are donated and would certainly do the task in a device where weight is simply not a consideration.
it is very interesting that going to the website they shall walk.org there is a picture of the small Indian child in a wheelchair and a picture of the team shown below in which the only thing that is in a wheelchair is the air tank. I searched the site long and hard and although they are up to version 15 of the suit it is very difficult to see a picture of any version at all.
I am not sure that I am totally shocked by this. Given this problem and given my condition I could walk into Microsoft research today and present a very convincing case that exoskeleton for a paraplegic represents an interesting and novel piece of wearable computation with major novel user interface problems. This is exactly what that organization loves. Okay
No comments:
Post a Comment