Robot robots help people with disabilities climb mountains

Two Japanese disabled people are expected to climb to the summit of Breithorn 4,164 meters high in the Swiss Alps with the help of climbers wearing robotic robes. How unique robots can help people with disabilities?

Seiji Uchida is practicing rock climbing
(Photo: theglobeandmail)

The climb in August 2006 is expected to be the first test of technology developed by Japanese researchers. The robotic suit team hopes it will help people with physical disabilities, as well as the growing number of elderly people. The suit is codenamed HAL and runs on battery power, recognizing motor motion through natural currents that travel across the surface of the skin and impacting the next movement. In this way, it supports movement and strengthens the wearer.

Seiji Uchida, 43, has been in a wheelchair since the car accident in 1983, carried up by Takeshi Matsumoto, his friend and physiotherapist, to the summit of Breithorn. Takeshi Matsumoto will be wearing a HAL robot suit to be able to lift his friend up the mountain. There is also Kyoga Ide, a 16-year-old teenager with muscular dystrophy. This young man will also join in the climb on the other shoulders with robots.

Uchida said that during a three-year retreat after a car accident, he saw a calendar on which Swiss country landscapes attracted him so much that he dreamed of visiting the country. "No one is going to do anything to climb the mountain with me, but if it does, it's not safe to pull the car . "

With a weight of about 50kg Uchida, plus body weight and robotic suit, so Matsumoto have to climb mountains with a total weight of about 150kg. Uchida said that what worries him most is the snow melting before completing the climb, because so the responsibilities of his friends will become more difficult. Uchida pursued a mountaineering ambition in Switzerland after seeing Yoshiyuki Sankai, a professor and engineer at the University of Tsukuba, performing a HAL on television last year. This climbing team will be led by Ken Noguchi, a famous climber in Japan