Hardware

Passive Dynamic Walking

Posted 26 Jul 2001 at 14:34 UTC by steve Share This

Nature has new article this week on an old invention: Passive Dynamic Walking machines. These are bipedal walking machines that can walk and balance using only gravity, friction, and other natural forces. They don't need computers, motors, or sensors. The earliest examples of passive dynamic walking were patented by toy makers in the 1800s. The Nature article concentrates on the Cornell Tinkertoy walker.

Applications in Medical Fields., posted 26 Jul 2001 at 15:13 UTC by lucretiaX » (Apprentice)

This would be highly interesting to see how these sort of walkers can be intergrated into medical fields such as rehabilitation of spinal cord injury patients. Of course these robotic walkers would need to be adjusted to patients weight and activity levels. But I'm sure for a majority of my paraplegic patients they would very much like to walk "on their own" again. I'll be keeping my eye on this one :)

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