Japanese Researchers Build Robotic Tail To Keep Elderly Upright (reuters.com) 27
Millions of years after the ancestors of humans evolved to lose their tails, a research team at Japan's Keio University have built a robotic one they say could help unsteady elderly people keep their balance. From a report: Dubbed Arque, the grey one-meter device mimics tails such as those of cheetahs and other animals used to keep their balance while running and climbing, according to the Keio team. "The tail keeps balance like a pendulum," said Junichi Nabeshima, a graduate student and researcher at the university's Embodied Media Project, displaying the robotic tail attached to his waist with a harness. "When a human tilts their body one way, the tail moves in the opposite direction." As Japan greys it is leading the industrial world in seeking ways to keep its aging population mobile and productive.
That's a good first step, but we then need to ... (Score:3)
. . . give them fire breath . . . and rubber Godzilla suits.
Then they could all go to that fancy Japanese castle that always gets trashed in Godzilla films . . . and just collectively kick it down.
geriatric-o-nine-tails (Score:3)
This begs the question... (Score:2)
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I didn't even know greys had tails...
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>>The Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam.
Dupes (Score:2, Troll)
Furry's Rejoice (Score:2)
Not only good for old people, but furry's and other animal cosplayers.
Chances are it was made for them first anyway :-P
Old news: (Score:2)
The furries have been making much better ones that don't need tethers, and have a wider variety of tail motion algorithms for decades.
The first I know of was in the late 90s and had myoelectronic pickups on the wearers leg muscles to synchronize it. (That's frankly a poor idea. A couple of switches/sensors in the costume feet work much better and aren't noise sensitive.)
They really do alter your gate a lot. It's hard to walk with one that's been programmed intentionally to be out of synch.
It keeps them on their feet ... (Score:2)
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Beautiful plumage.
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They simply go the tail design wrong, obviously a roo tail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne... [dailymail.co.uk] would serve far better. For balance, a seat, a double kick combat platform and a weapon unto itself.
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This is not a great idea. (Score:1)
Addresses an already-solved problem (Score:2)
We solved this for babies decades ago...
https://www.walmart.com/browse... [walmart.com]
Robotic Dupe Posting (Score:2)
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
One condition... (Score:4, Insightful)
It should only work if you wear the cat ears as well.
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It should only work if you wear the cat ears as well.
Will this also involve the use of creepy looking computer generated fur?
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Tail recursion? (Score:2)
Is this a tail recursion problem?
Great (Score:2)
It took our ancestors what? 1000 million years of evolution and nearly being off'd by the second fittest to get rid of that damn tail and now we're voluntarily adding it back??
Mass (Score:2)
OK, obviously this is intended to elicit clever meme-y jokes, but just for one moment if I can ruin all the fun and ask these maniacs grasping for grant money - aren't you asking an elderly person to take on more weight and put more strain on their backs? If you make it too lightweight it would have little effect and much more means more back strain. This is to say nothing of the fact that the human body evolved *away* a tail and the muscles to support it aren't there so you're distributing the work to the
Got tail? (Score:2)
"Now I've got as much tail as I did when I was younger"