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Superhuman strength is in reach with Titan Arm
A battery-powered robotic arm that exponentially increases human strength has won the 2013 James Dyson Award.
Fans of Iron Man around the world, rejoice. Super-human strength is finally within reach. This year’s winner of the prestigious James Dyson Award, the international design competition led by the British entrepreneur, augments upper body strength by 40 pounds but could be tweaked to handle much more.
Titan Arm was developed by four mechanical engineering students from the University of Pennsylvania: Nick Parrotta, Elizabeth Beattie, Nick McGill, and Niko Vladimirov. The prototype took eight months to create, and cost just £1,200 to build. Existing exoskeleton designs can cost as much as £63,000.
The designers have used 3D printing technology to keep costs down. Components are printed on demand and fitted to a generic arm to create a bespoke product. The finished Titan Arm will come in at just a tenth of the cost of existing exoskeletons on the market.
Mr Dyson said of the invention: “Titan Arm is obviously an ingenious design, but the team’s use of modern, rapid – and relatively inexpensive – manufacturing techniques makes the project even more compelling.”
The applications for the Titan Arm are manifold. The exoskeleton technology can aid those lifting heavy objects as part of their daily work. Given that over a third of injuries in the workplace are caused by manual handling according to the UK national scheme for health and safety, this could have a significant impact on the safety of the workplace. Good news for bosses: the UK loses £6bn in estimated annual losses due to manual handling injuries.
The Titan Arm can also be used to rehabilitate people with back injuries, allowing them to rebuild muscle and relearn motor control. Over the last decade over 7.5 million working days were lost due to musculoskeletal disorders.
“We wanted Titan Arm to be affordable, as exoskeletons are rarely covered by health insurance,” explained Mr Parrotta. “This informed our design decisions and the materials we used. Most structural components are machined from inexpensive aluminum.”
Parotta and his team will use the £30,000 prize money to fund further development, testing and, ultimately, commercialisation of the Titan Arm. Titan Legs and even Titan Torsos could soon be on the cards. “Once you’ve developed the technology for one joint, it’s not too much of a stretch to do the others.”
Despite being fervent Iron Man fans, the team are keen to constrain their research to creating products that help the everyman, rather than creating a super man. “The US military has been research products that provide tremendous strength but I’m less concerned with creating a super human, more with helping people to feel more human,” said Mr Parrotta.
Titan Arm beat off stiff competition to win this year's accolade. Runners up include the Handie, a dextrous prosthetic hand designed by Japanese inventor Hiroshi Yamaura and a 3D printed plastic lightweight cast called the Cortex. These companies will both receive £10,000 to fund further development.
The 2012 winner of the Award was Dan Watson, inventor of SafetyNet, a fish net with an illuminated escape route that prevents the capture of young, unmarketable fish. Since winning the award, Dan is in talks with government agencies across the world about sustainable fishing.
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/technology/10430656/Superhuman-strength-is-in-reach-with-Titan-Arm.html
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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