Willy

This was the one year I actually attended siggraph, so I actually got to try this thing. They had it set up at a booth on the expo floor. Unfortunately it was mainly controlled through a joystick and the whole thing seemed pretty fragile, so the person running the booth had control of it instead of the person wearing it

When I tried it they were basically demonstrating the "haptic feedback" mode which was effectively "hey look when it moves it alters your center of gravity" and then they move it and you're like "yep that sure did alter my center of gravity"

the paper talks about having it analyze posture and respond in realtime and I'm still really curious how well that would actually work in practice

cool as hell in any case

hell this is really cool. if it could be made slimmer and had fake fur on it, I'd want one immediately. I've seen people make robotic tails but this one seems pretty advanced compared to most of those that swing from side to side.

also the other paper mentioned about robotic arms controlled with your feet?? rad stuff, this is the part of the cyberpunk dystopia that I need more of in my life.

I think I've heard a long time ago that there was research on robotic tails to help people who are balance impaired due to the tail providing more balance in tree dwelling animals. Either way we can all agree robot tails is the next step towards transhumanist nirvana

i was at siggraph 2019 (with the dog) this was very genuinely cool and basically the entire emerging technology section feels like this lmao

radical bodies, indeed