While all of us geeks entertain notions of “someday” having some of the technologies found in the oft-watched series of our youths, a lot of companies and individuals have gotten down to it and started creating amazing technological realities far and away from the imagined high-tech roots that it came from. Take robots. Robots have once been a dream of science fiction writers like Asimov, and more recently has been confined to places like an automated manufacturing plant. The HAL however, is a real robot designed for commercial use – and uses brain waves to boot.

                                              Pose? Check. Cool blue lights? Check. Disability/old age? Uhh, no check, but I still want one.

How much more sci-fi can it be? While it’s designed for the disabled and the elderly, of which I’m neither, I find myself salivating at the possibilities of me donning such high-tech machinery (with glowing blue accent lights!) and walking down a busy street looking incongruous. HAL (which stands for Hybrid Assistive Limb) is the product of Cyberdyne (notice the science fiction influence again?) and the fertile mind of Yoshiyuki Sankai, a professor at Tsukuba University in Japan.

                                             Heavy loads usually impossible for the disabled becomes a mere exercise in brain-activity. The HAL is meant to return independence to once-dependent individuals.

Sankai-san’s company is planning to rent out these contraptions at an eyebrow-raising amount of $2,200 per month (P99,000 thereabouts), although one-legged versions are available for the more affordable price of $1500 (P66,000) per month. Also considering the price of some medical equipment, this is not a bad investment, especially if it means becoming mobile again. At the moment, it is only available in Japan, although there’s been interest from European countries. I would like to see them here too, but the price is prohibitive. No price for purchase has been given, since Sankai-san intends his device to be used primarily for social welfare purposes.

                                             Sentai! White One, Ready for action!

The robot is strapped to the user’s limbs and waist and uses sensors that detect brain waves to tell the limbs what to do. Previous news items on the Hal has shown its capabilities of lifting weights up to 80% more than the usual a normal person can lift, which means it should more or less complete an ailing person’s mobility.

                                             A "spec sheet" from the company's websit.

This product is obviously the result of a very determined and very “geeky” guy – note the HAL reference (from the late Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey series), the name of his company (Cyberdyne – originally used as the name of the company that manufactured the future-terrorizing group of Terminators in the movie with the same name), and of course the concept of a robotically-enhanced musculature is bread and butter of many a sci-fi fiction. Then again, this is fiction no longer.