Exoskeleton Contest Tetsujin

Tetsujin

I found out about a interesting new contest held at some robot games Tetsujin. Tetsujin means "iron man" in Japanese and is a contest were Teams build powered exoskeletons to augment the strength of one human in a weight lifting competition.


The event was held at the 2004 RoboNexus Conference which is one of the largest robotics expo in North America.Six teams entered this year the six teams include two from California, one from Connecticut, one from Florida, and two from Texas with skill sets that range from talented high school students to enthusiastic hobbyists to professional mechanical engineers.

Created with wide social views in mind, Tetsujin is more than a normal robotics competition; it is an attempt to encourage both professional and student engineers to innovate in a direction that will ultimately help people in a wide range of situations. The competition will showcase an emerging technology in the robotics industry which promises applications ranging from national defense improvements to increased mobility for the disabled.

This year had a static weight lift next year though walking might be part of the competition.

The official results are as follows:

1st: Team Xela, 113.6 Kg, 87.63 cm, .46 sec, 147.906 pts
2nd: Team Raptor, 295.5 Kg, 10.16 cm, .2 sec, 68.082 pts
3rd: Team Techno-Trousers, 295.5 Kg, 34.29 cm, 1.9 sec, 33.517 pts

I find it amazing that some of these exoskeletons are bulit by teams of high school kids and Hobbyist and not DARPA or SONY. This was the first year for this event but I cant wait so see future Tetsujins and how much better the tech and exoskeletons get.


www.servomagazine.com...
www.prweb.com...

nice looks like some progress is being made.