Cyborg-walkers stride toward Japan's robotics future

Three Japanese cyborg look-alikes turned heads on busy Tokyo streets and subway trains Monday as they made their way to a robotics conference on a hot summer's day -- without breaking a sweat.

'Knitted muscles' provide power

Researchers have coated normal fabric with an electroactive material, and in this way given it the ability to actuate in the same way as muscle fibres. The technology opens new opportunities to design "textile muscles" that ...

A brain-computer interface for controlling an exoskeleton

Scientists working at Korea University, Korea, and TU Berlin, Germany have developed a brain-computer control interface for a lower limb exoskeleton by decoding specific signals from within the user's brain.

Disabled Japanese tourist plans robo-suit adventure

A disabled Japanese adventurer says he is planning to leave his wheelchair behind and walk up a medieval French World Heritage site next year with the help of a cutting-edge robotic suit.

Evolution in reverse: insects recover lost 'wings'

The extravagant headgear of small bugs called treehoppers are in fact wing-like appendages that grew back 200 million years after evolution had supposedly cast them aside, according to a study published Thursday in Nature.

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Exoskeleton

An exoskeleton is the external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to the internal skeleton (endoskeleton) of, for example, a human. In popular usage, some of the larger kinds of exoskeletons are known as "shells". Examples of exoskeleton animals include insects such as grasshoppers and cockroaches, and crustaceans such as crabs and lobsters. The shells of the various groups of shelled mollusks, including those of snails, clams, tusk shells, chitons and nautilus, are also exoskeletons.

Mineralized exoskeletons first appeared in the fossil record about 550 million years ago, and their evolution is considered by some to have played a role in the subsequent Cambrian explosion of animals.[citation needed]

Some animals, such as the tortoise, have both an endoskeleton and an exoskeleton.

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