when you have a long history of bad
knees like me jumping off a ledge with a
50 pound weight on your back is a
surefire recipe for months of pt and
crutches but when you're wearing a
military-grade robotic knee brace
theoretically you should be okay
moment of truth
i'm like very nervous
i know
i'm brent rose and i'm about to pay for
my orthopedists hawaiian vacation three
two
one
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oh yeah baby ah all
day
sweet you're not going anywhere dr
shapiro let's jump off a roof
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so you've heard about augmented reality
right well how about augmented mobility
robotic exoskeletons have captivated us
for years they're major tropes in sci-fi
movies like aliens elysium and avatar
but in real life engineers have been
working on them since the early 1900s
generally with terrible clunky results
here we see the electrically powered
machine built into the form of a human
skeleton while there's been some real
breakthroughs in recent years most of
them are still bulky prohibitively power
hungry as well as expensive that's why a
san francisco company called romobotics
caught my eye
rome claims to have solved a lot of
these problems making a robotic knee
brace that promises to double your
strength and endurance and reduce
experienced g-forces by half all while
doing it in a package that's lightweight
lasts up to eight hours and is
relatively affordable if you think that
sounds too good to be true you're not
alone so today we're going to stress
test the hell out of this thing
oh yeah how does that feel definitely
feeling it though and considering i just
reinjured my knee we're gonna be stress
testing me too
ooh
slipped i'm fine
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i'm tim swift i'm the founder and ceo of
rome robotics so we have one line of
product which is a performance product
which is forge and that is really
designed for military first responders
what are some of the specific
applications that you've seen it use for
first responders and military
firefighters firefighters walk in with
significant amounts of gear and it's
unacceptable for them to find themselves
impeded if there's fires that aren't on
ground floors or multi-story buildings
they're not taking elevators up to those
needs they're carrying their gear and
typically backup gear some of our
customers are sending an extra guy
for the sole goal of carrying all the
gear because they know by the time they
make it to the 28th floor that guy's
smoked his only job is to carry the gear
and get out we go out with maritime
users in small boats and these guys are
taking you know 50 mile an hour speeds
over 10-foot sea states and they're just
getting beat by the g-forces and we can
put systems on users and we get a 50
reduction in g-forces immediately no
training involved
i'm excited to
beat myself up in this thing it's great
what makes rome's military leg brace
unique is that it uses pneumatic
actuators instead of heavy motors and
servos that means it's using compressed
air to augment your knee movement and in
theory give you up to two times your own
strength
specifically this is designed for
military members or first responders so
the size is probably pretty close to
where you're at yeah tech journalist
military first responder it's about the
same
you have a brace on each leg and then
you have a power pack that powers both
of them so that comprises kind of the
two main parts of the system this
contains the compressor uh some of the
brains and that work in conjunction with
the sensors on the units themselves all
controlled by the remote that's on your
left shoulder if you want to go ahead
and press and hold that will turn it on
all right moment of truth
good morning
oh yeah
yeah it's very springy
i couldn't help but notice that anytime
i move there's a bit of a noise coming
out of it what is that we're hearing
yeah so what you're hearing right now is
the compressor itself charging up air to
supply to each of the debris the braces
themselves part of what you're also
hearing is when you move there's the
filling portion for the actuator and
then as you come back up you'll hear
venting
so some of that is both the brace sound
and the power back sound something we're
uh working towards reducing but that's
what you're hearing and that's what some
of the vibrations are that you're
feeling
okay so we're gonna start with a control
test and to do that we're gonna do some
squatting which i haven't done in like
20 years normally you want to do this to
failure failure for me since i have a
freshly tweaked knee is going to be any
inkling of pain or just me passing out
with a dumbbell on my head all right so
this is 185
see how this goes
how red is my face right now
yep we'll call it good four is good
now i've got the forge on we're gonna
turn it up to max support mode see what
we can do here
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all right
it's okay to be scared
here we go
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huh
definitely feeling
a lot more
push
on my backs and my thighs
i also don't feel like i'm about to have
an embolism
so that's good
i can still have a conversation
so that's good too
oh yeah
i am definitely feeling it though let's
call that failure
eight
i'm pretty happy with that i'm gonna go
pass out for a second here
it's fine everything's fine
so the forge isn't built to assist with
your running but it is built in such a
way that it shouldn't impede your
running so when it's powered off it's
not getting in my way but it's not
assisting either it's not designed to
assist but let's see what happens
that's never going to get old
it's really huffing and puffing let's go
up to six
all right
so i i can feel there's some resistance
i can't tell if it's making it harder or
easier again i'm still feeling the
weight i'm feeling the pressure in the
back of my thighs and around my ankles
but my knees feel totally fine right now
so that's good
it's not helping
but
if i turn it off again
oh yeah
oh yeah let's go without definitely
better without yeah so i tried at level
one and at level three it was definitely
impeding a little bit it's just kind of
resisting against your knees in a way
that doesn't help you it took some of
the impact off my knees which was nice
but i was kind of having to fight
against it so if you got to run with
this thing turn it off
this is the impact test which i'm rather
nervous about we don't have a boat but
this is going to simulate a sort of high
seas situation and the impacts that
would be taking on my legs we're on the
high box this one's a little bit scary
for me three
two
one
feel it on my feet
excuse me
burrito
actually want to try to do that one
again with the spider-man landing
oh
hell yeah
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it's worth noting that while we're just
testing the forge today which is
designed for these types of high impacts
rome has two other models the ascend and
the elevate the ascent is designed
mostly for people with knee issues and
it helps them with things like standing
and sitting and going up and down stairs
the elevate is made for skiers whose
knees aren't what they used to be i
actually got to test it in big sky
montana a couple winters ago and it did
in fact help me power through turns with
less strain on my knees though the
sounds of the air compressor in an
otherwise tranquil place was pretty hard
to ignore
so the forge did pretty well in the lab
in some controlled testing so let's try
a little less controlled testing they
told me specifically that it will not
help me dunk a basketball we're gonna
prove them wrong
perfect
all right i'm all forged up now let's
see if this improves my vertical at all
no
come on baby
i cannot fly i was wrong to believe that
i could fly
and i feel stupid now okay fine so it
was not designed for dunking let's try a
few things that it was designed for
so a more realistic scenario might be a
firefighter having to carry a person out
of harm's way and that could be up many
many flights of stairs so to simulate a
dead body we're gonna use our director
morgan here feeling dead body-ish let's
do it all right here we go
oh yeah how's that feel excellent and uh
we're going up
oh yeah
you can hear the pistons working
but i can still kind of carry on a
normal conversation
which i was really
really not expecting
hi pop
that was actually pretty good how you
doing dead body this is my stop perfect
thank you
all right
not exactly the stealthiest contraption
but if i have to make a hard landing
i am really loving it and if i need to
sneak around
just turn it off get real sneaky
all right let's talk highs and lows
highs i was able to squat more than my
body weight eight times that is
something i never would have been able
to do under normal circumstances two i
was able to jump off a high platform
with weight and land like fricken
spider-man i will do that all day long
because that was stupid fun
three
i've been on my feet all day long
carrying weight going up and down things
carrying morgan and my legs feel good my
knees aren't really shot i could still
do stuff
and that's kind of a miracle in itself
especially considering i just tweaked my
knee recently lows when i didn't have
the brace on i tried to squat more than
my body weight without warming up and i
thought i was gonna face plant and die
bad call two i may have sprained this
finger jumping out of a tree and landing
awkwardly which was definitely my fault
but what can you do and three this brace
not let me yam it like a professional
basketball player truly a tragedy but
that's actually something that it could
be programmed to do in the future which
i think is really cool
the other thing i couldn't ignore about
the forge is the noise right now it sits
at about 65 decibels which is rather
prominent indoors
definitely not ready for the public
library once they sort that out though
it'll be interesting to see how
widespread this type of tech becomes not
just from rome but from other innovators
in the personal mobility space with all
that being said we've got one more test
left to do
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it is important to keep it contained
around your thigh but we're not looking
to cut off circulation there to keep it
nobody can contain these thighs but go
on