Robots will inevitably be part of our future, and hopefully won’t kill us after all the crap we put them through. But before the robots crush us and claim dominion, they’ll at least help us build cars, thanks to GM’s RoboGlove.
Despite sounding like an EDM trio, RoboGlove is a collaboration between GM, NASA, and Swedish company Bioservo. The idea is that GM’s employees will don the glove, and it will literally take on the heavy lifting. Essentially the glove acts as a force multiplier, taking on most of the weight of heavier jobs off the bones of humans by using actuators to lift. Think of it as a sort of robot you wear around your hand for doing hard work, and it’s even portable, powered by a battery pack that hangs off an employee’s belt.
The idea is to reduce workplace injuries and general fatigue on the assembly line, so employees have fewer health issues and are able to enjoy their lives more. And also to give them the awesome perk of saying that they have robotic superstrength, which makes your job sound far more awesome. But it also presages a future where, in order to better prevent accidents and keep humans safe, they’ll use more and more robotic tools on the job. In other words, soon, robotic superstrength will be commonplace. Hopefully they’ll at least let you crush full beer cans with it or something.
(via Autoblog)