Iron Man, step aside – there’s a new superhuman in town. Dock workers in South Korea recently received a set of robotic exoskeleton suits that enable them to lift heavy equipment without breaking a sweat! The suits are currently being tested by Daewoo, and one day they may enable workers to lift as much as 220 pounds.
To get into the robot suit, workers strap into the foot beds and then strap in across their legs, waist and chest, allowing the robot suit to move right along with the human inside. Workers have praised the suit because it allows them to lift heavy objects without straining their bodies, making it feel like they are lifting light objects instead of the back-breaking items that they often lift.
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Right now the suit is in a testing phase. It can only lift about 66 pounds and can’t really navigate slippery floors or do things that require a lot of twisting. The suit also only has a 3 hour battery life, which Daewoo plans on improving. But once the exoskeleton suit reaches its full potential, Daweoo hopes to see it hoisting 220 pounds, relieving the stress on worker’s bodies and drastically improving the time it takes to build a ship.
Images via Daewoo