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Elderly in Japan Are Wearing Exoskeletons to Keep Working Past Retirement Age

Eliar

Eliar

interestingengineering.com

Elderly in Japan Are Wearing Exoskeletons to Keep Working Past Retirement Age

With an aging population, companies are looking to keep older people employed for longer thanks to the assistive suits.
interestingengineering.com interestingengineering.com

Exoskeletons aren't merely useful for paralyzed people, super-strong soldiers, or for those assembling automotives — they're now also being used to give support to the elderly.

NewScientist reported that the older generation in Japan is using exoskeletons to complete regular everyday tasks that allow them to keep working later in life.

With a high rate of aging citizens, Japan currently has one of the oldest populations in the world. In order to counteract this, companies are creating exoskeletons for the elderly to wear to keep working.


According to the U.S. Population Reference Bureau, 26% of Japan's population is over 65 years old. That means it has the highest number of people above that age anywhere in the world.

To try and find a solution to this increasing issue, Japanese firms are building exoskeleton suits that older people can wear that will give them added support to keep on working.

One of these companies is Innophys.

Innophys has built a number of suits that you wear like a backpack. These are recharged by squeezing a hand pump 30 times, which pushes air into the air-powered 'muscles'.
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One flaccid cyberpunk future, slightly used please.
 
Yeah, that's not really surprising. It's just the same trend as we saw with automation — technology, instead of helping people live their better lives, is used to make them work harder.

Thanks, capitalism.
 
For fuck's sake just give people money. It's okay to just give people money even if they don't do anything. Christ.
 
RoyalNoises said:
For fuck's sake just give people money. It's okay to just give people money even if they don't do anything. Christ.
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I mean, in this case it's a declining workforce - ie there's not enough workers to fill demand - so whilst that is an excellent idea it wouldn't actually help in this particular instance.

You'd probably need to... I'unno, fiddle the immigration policy or something to bring more younger people in.
 
My impression is the "elderly" thing is a marketing angle on the extremely orthodox use case of "lifting heavy things" for industrial exoskeletons.

Like a little searching turns up that the company that makes these things -- Innophys -- is doing the Venture Capital thing, so whatever, right.

Honestly the things sound completely unusable --

These are recharged by squeezing a hand pump 30 times, which pushes air into the air-powered 'muscles'.
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LOL that they're aimed at users that
1) Can't lift like 25 kg on their own, but
2) have the ferocious grip strength to recharge the "muscles" every single time

An air compressor is like $100, just run an umbilical off of that. Well, then you're trailing a tripping hazard everywhere, which is not great. (I notice that's what's going on with the pic of the dude in the hardhat though). But that limits use cases to "can't walk around with them", so they're not gonna go for that.

And they don't seem to help at all with twisting, which is a huge risk factor when doing repetitive lifting. Like never mind giving it to elderly people, it seems like a much better use case would be just give them to everyone, as a preventative measure, regardless of whether they're old or whatever.

Anyway I wonder how intuitive these are to use, like, it doesn't look like it does "feedback" to be a native power assist, it looks like it just goes "psssh" and does the lift while you go along with it. Which is nice I guess, but $4500 is an awful lot of money to be competing against a google search for "rigging equipment" or whatever, with an equal-sized budget, and an eye towards addressing specific tasks.
 
The thing looks designed more to support the back, neck and knees than actually increase strength. Which is pretty important even if you're relatively strong and able for an older person. It's a hell of a lot better than the west where companies seemingly go out of their way to exacerbate any joint and spine problems their older employees may have.
 
Guessmyname said:
I mean, in this case it's a declining workforce - ie there's not enough workers to fill demand - so whilst that is an excellent idea it wouldn't actually help in this particular instance.

You'd probably need to... I'unno, fiddle the immigration policy or something to bring more younger people in.
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Yeah, this. This isn't a "make people work even harder because we can" problem, it's a "we don't have enough workers" problem. Which is absurd when you consider that Japan is just two doors away from the Southeast Asian countries with their huge migrant labor exports, but I guess that's what xenophobia gets you.
 
Very cool and not at all dystopic for people who should be able to retire comfortably to have self powered braces designed for them so they can still be expected to produce.
 
Play cybernpunk 2077. Nice parody game

2077: Guys it's not funnY I thought the game was supposed to be a parody
 
Seeing what part time support by nursing stuff costs with my grandparents atm, this thing pays for itself pretty quickly.
 
Just wait until the elderly realize the power they have now been given and they start enslaving the youth who forced them into this. And after that, they will spread around the world with this very technology to other elders and come to be the ruling class of the whole planet.
 
When Grandma starts making trips to the store with her 3D movement gear you'll all be singing a different tune
 
RoyalNoises said:
For fuck's sake just give people money. It's okay to just give people money even if they don't do anything. Christ.
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You say that, but there totally is; you can only lie and fear-monger effectively about how all of the economic progress is your doing once, when giving poor people money will immediately confirm that rich sudo-dragons are actually not the best way to leverage capital for growth.
 
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