I know this is unrelated, but the closed caption's text accuracy is embarrassingly poor for an organization of Reuter's stature.
Father builds exoskeleton to help wheelchair-bound son walk
121–130 of 200 posts
Re: Father builds exoskeleton to help wheelchair-bound son walk
#122I am not a robotics expert, and I've always wanted to ask one... Why do these designs always have the actuators mounted directly at the joints? Why not have some high modulus yarn transfer the joint loads (ala a bike brake cable, say with high modulus aramid?)? One could keep the actuators near the center of mass (or a trolley that follows it around), and keep the suit fairly minimal.
> bike brake cable Funny you mention that, this guy [1] made an actuator/arm recently doing that technique. Does work but accuracy/flex can be a problem. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahSS5HUylT8
Curious, could one apply fancy control theory and modern computing at the problem and fix most of the accuracy and flex problem? Position feedback with integrated sensors can be very compact and highly accurate, and human muscle seem to also use feedback control for holding position..
Re: Father builds exoskeleton to help wheelchair-bound son walk
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Talk about impactful work. I wonder how many lives you've changed. $1000/mo for a rental. People without insurance need not apply.
$1k a month seems downright cheap compared to many medical treatments. Hospital visits in the US average $11.7k for a full stay[1]. Antiviral treatments for Hepatitis C like Harvoni and Sovaldi cost $16k-90k for 12 weeks, though you can go with a generic version for $5k-10k a month. [1] https://www.debt.org/medical/hospital-surgery-costs/
Try cancer meds, Revlimid is 20k for the rest of your life or at least some years.
Re: Father builds exoskeleton to help wheelchair-bound son walk
#124Video of the exoskeleton in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yBfUcFRZ-I
This is really cool! See to me this is what hacker news should be all about. A group of people facing some problem and hacking something together that works really well.
Re: Father builds exoskeleton to help wheelchair-bound son walk
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So, from their perspective, a wheelchair and some pain meds can do the job easily. And not even a good wheelchair. For my wife recently diagnosed with MS, they would only approve of a basic, featureless, uncomfortable one after I would pay the $3000 deductible plus 20% coinsurance. Instead, I got a light-weight folding electric wheelchair with nearly full-day worth of battery (15 miles), with a spare battery, adjus…
Great thing it works this way for mechanical tech. For chemicals, that is, medicines, paying out of pocket is not impossible, but much harder. The $1500 you invested will likely last a number of years. Or it might be a month worth of prescription drugs; cheap generics do not exist for everything (and may sometimes be inferior). I don't know a good way out of it. The U.S. medical insurance system sucks, but my friends…
> Germany and Netherlands report that theirs is even worse at providing any remotely advanced treatment.
It kind of depends on what you'd consider advanced treatment. I know a few people with chronic illnesses that are dependent on getting their (expensive) medications and they never had a problem with that. Besides the prescription fee of 5€ (not 100% sure on that one) they pay nothing out of their pocket.
But I've heard from people that that they often have problems for example with getting approval for new wheelchairs, accessibility adjustments for their cars, etc.
In general it is true that only necessities are covered by public health insurance. This makes sense in most cases for obvious reasons, but in some cases the limits seem totally arbitrary and are not beneficial to the consumer nor the insurer. Luckily I am young and healthy so my confrontations with our healthcare are limited to my bi-yearly dentist appointments, but I can absolutely imagine how there are gigantic bureaucratic hurdles when needing something remotely special.
Re: Father builds exoskeleton to help wheelchair-bound son walk
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve only managed to get more advanced treatment in the UK (still nothing ground breaking) by having private medical cover in addition to the national health care. Thankfully as the national health service covers all the basic care it’s possible to get private cover for around £40 per month.
That sounds _really_ good, and kind of blows a big hole in a lot of arguments against universal health care. I pay more than that monthly for relatively basic medication and that's _with_ pretty good employer-funded insurance
It gets better/worse. NHS provides universal cover for a lower per capita cost than Medicare/Medicaid covers the portion of the US population it covers.
Re: Father builds exoskeleton to help wheelchair-bound son walk
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't forget patents. You yourself can create whatever you want, but the second you want to sell it you have to have a patent law firm scour over everything, pay dozens of companies, get rejected by others, and end up having to entirely redesign your product in an inefficient manner because some dipstick owns a patent they just sit on. If we abolish patents innovation will finally be possible.
3D printers are a good example that I recently came across. There is a patent for a 3D printer enclosed in a box. A number of plastics print much better when in an enclosure with no drafts and more easily controllable temperatures. But instead, 3D printers must be sold and function on their own without a box, to avoid the patent. Enclosures are then sold separately and you end up with a 3D printer in an enclosure any…
And also FDM/FFF in general, which has been around since the 90s.
Re: Father builds exoskeleton to help wheelchair-bound son walk
#128This is amazing. I built one to help my nephew walk, and now selling commercially ( http://trexorobotics.com ) I am fed-up at the lack of options available to individuals. People thought that everyone will get an exoskeleton and be able to walk with it everywhere. But the industry ran into many challenges. A big one that many dont understand is getting insurance coverage. The way the US healthcare system is designed,…
Inspiring. You’re doing amazing work.
Re: Father builds exoskeleton to help wheelchair-bound son walk
#129This is amazing. I built one to help my nephew walk, and now selling commercially ( http://trexorobotics.com ) I am fed-up at the lack of options available to individuals. People thought that everyone will get an exoskeleton and be able to walk with it everywhere. But the industry ran into many challenges. A big one that many dont understand is getting insurance coverage. The way the US healthcare system is designed,…
> So, from their perspective, a wheelchair and some pain meds can do the job easily. And not even a good wheelchair. For my wife recently diagnosed with MS, they would only approve of a basic, featureless, uncomfortable one after I would pay the $3000 deductible plus 20% coinsurance. Instead, I got a light-weight folding electric wheelchair with nearly full-day worth of battery (15 miles), with a spare battery, adjus…
Can you recommend the specific model of the wheelchair you ordered?
Re: Father builds exoskeleton to help wheelchair-bound son walk
#130The research and engineering of new mobility aids is fine, but the inventor/CEO's quote, "Ten years from now, there will be no, or far fewer, wheelchairs" belies an attitude strongly criticized by many in the disability community. And in the video footage he says, "wheelchairs are an anomaly, men and women, human beings are meant to be upright". Imagine saying "Bicycles an anomaly—humans are meant to be upright, not in some aero-dynamic tucked position."
Deriding one form mobility tech (an asset to more than 10,000,000 people) to promote another potential one is disappointing.
The Exoskeleton's Hidden Burden [0] is a good article that includes the history of exoskeleton development (goes back to 19th c. Russia):
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/exosk...