Powered up on eLegs

eLegs in action

In San Francisco today, paraplegics are standing and walking on bionic exoskeletons called eLegs designed by Berkeley Bionics.

The eLegs exoskeleton unit is made up of controller crutches, a backpack mounted control unit, and leg units that have both hip and knee rotation systems. The wearer controls leg movement gesture based commands transmitted through the sensors and controls the crutch units.

It is hoped that the eLegs system completes clinical trial by mid next year. The eLegs system could be available to the public by late next year. Updated August 2011.


More Tech @ Berkley Bionics, CNET

Single Atom Image

One Atom of rubidium-85

Scientists in New Zealand managed to take this photo of a single atom of rubidium-85.

They slowed down a group of atoms and managed to capture the atom with optical "tweezers" - basically 2 lasers acting like a tractor beam.

Once captured they used a camera designed to take photographs in space, and take this image. This technology is important in the future development of quantum-logic computing.

More Tech @ Popular Science