Dyson's first prize received a $ 2,000 Titan Arm project

The Dyson Prize for 2013 received annual winners: the first place went to the project of 4 mechanical students at the University of Pennsylvania with a robotic exoskeleton Titan Arm.

As the name implies, the Titan Arm is a wearable exoskeleton for a person’s hand, which allows you to increase the strength of the hands up to 18 kg or (the project has two purposes) to help people regain mobility of the upper limbs after injuries or accidents. Technically, the Titan Arm consists of two segments - a power unit worn on the back and control electronics and, in fact, the skeleton itself, which is attached to the user's hand. In addition, the project also has another important advantage - the creators more than radically managed to reduce the cost of this kind of development: from $ 100,000 to $ 2,000. The weight of the Titan Arm is 9 kg, which, according to the authors, is even "less than the average school backpack."

The Titan Arm on a person looks something like this:



As a power plant, a lithium-polymer battery is used, which lasts 8 hours and requires 30 minutes to recharge - it is not difficult to do something like hot-swappable batteries and continue working in the exoskeleton. You can wear the Titan Arm on almost any person, thanks to the flexible frame and straps with which it is attached to the body. Parts of the Titan Arm themselves were made using the now-ubiquitous 3D printing.

Student authors of the project, having received the well-deserved $ 48,260 as the first prize, promise to release the Titan Arm as an open project so that anyone can join it.

Video from the Titan Arm below:



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