Stress Testing Real-Life Robot Legs

When you have a long history of bad knees like me,

jumping off a ledge with a 50-pound weight

on your back is a surefire recipe

for months of PT and crutches.

But when you're wearing a military-grade

robotic knee brace, theoretically, you should be okay.

[exhales] Moment of truth.

I'm like very nervous, [chuckles] I know.

I'm Brent Rose and I'm about to pay for my

orthopedist's Hawaiian vacation.

Three,

two,

one.

Oh yeah, baby!

Ugh,

all day!

Sweet!

You're not going anywhere Dr. Shapiro.

Let's jump off a roof.

[upbeat techno music]

So you've heard about augmented reality, right?

Well, how about augmented mobility?

Robotic exoskeletons have captivated us for years.

They're major tropes in Sci-Fi movies

like Aliens, Elysium, and Avatar.

But in real life, engineers have been working on them

since the early 1900s,

generally with terrible clunky results.

[Announcer] Here, we see the electrically powered machine

built into the form of a human skeleton.

While there've been some real breakthroughs

in recent years, most of them are still bulky,

prohibitively power hungry, as well as expensive.

That's why a San Francisco company

called Roam Robotics caught my eye.

[rhythmic bass beats]

Roam claims to have solved a lot of these problems,

making a robotic knee brace that promises

to double your strength and endurance

in reduced-experience G-forces by half,

all while doing it in a package that's lightweight,

lasts up to eight hours, and is relatively affordable.

If you think that sounds too good to be true,

you're not alone.

So today we're going to stress test

the hell out of this thing.

[treadmill whirring]

Oh yeah. How's that feel?

Definitely feeling it now.

And considering I just re-injured my knee,

we're gonna be stress testing me, too.

Ooh, slipped.

I'm fine.

I'm Tim Swift.

I'm the founder and CEO of Roam Robotics.

So we have one line of product,

which is a performance product, which is Forge.

And that is really designed for military first-responders.

What are some of the specific applications

that you've seen it used for first responders and military?

Firefighters.

Firefighters walk in with significant amounts of gear

and it's unacceptable for them to find themselves impeded.

If there's fires that aren't on ground floors

or multi-story buildings,

they're not taking elevators up to those needs,

they're carrying their gear and typically backup gear.

Some of our customers are sending an extra guy

for the sole goal of carrying all the gear

'cause they know by the time they make it to the 20th floor,

that guy is smoked.

His only job is to carry the gear and get out.

We go out with maritime users in small boats,

and these guys are taking, you know,

50-mile-an-hour speeds over 10-foot sea states.

And they're just getting beat by the G-forces.

And we can put systems on users

and we get a 50% reduction in G-forces immediately,

no training involved.

I'm excited to beat myself up in this thing.

[Tim] That's great.

What makes Roam's military leg brace unique

is that it uses pneumatic actuators

instead of heavy motors and servos.

That means it's using compressed air

to augment your knee movements.

And in theory, give you up to two times your own strength.

Specifically, this is designed for military members

or first responders.

So the size is probably pretty close to where you're at.

Yeah, tech journalist/military first responder.

It's perfect, right? It's about the same.

[Collin] You have a brace on each leg

and then you have a power pack that powers both of them.

So that comprises kind of the two main parts of the system.

This contains the compressor,

some of the brains and that work in conjunction

with the sensors on the units themselves,

all controlled by the remote that's on your left shoulder.

If you wanna go ahead and press and hold,

that'll turn it on.

All right, moment of truth.

[compressor whirring]

Good morning. [compressor whirring]

Oh yeah. [compressor whirring]

Yeah, it's very springy.

I couldn't help but notice that anytime I move

there's a bit of a noise coming out of it.

What is that we're hearing?

Yeah, so what you're hearing right now

is the compressor itself charging up air

to supply to each of the braces themselves.

Part of what you're also hearing is when you move,

there's the filling portion

for the actuator. That's that rumble.

And then as you come back up, you'll hear venting.

So some of that is both the brace sound

and the power pack sound.

It's something we're working towards reducing,

but that's what you're hearing.

And that's what some of the vibrations are

that you're feeling.

[weights clanking]

Okay, so we're gonna start with a controlled test

and to do that we're gonna do some squatting,

which I haven't done in like 20 years.

Normally you want to do this to failure.

Failure for me, since I have a freshly tweaked knee,

is gonna be any inkling of pain

or just me passing out with a dumbbell on my head.

All right, so this is 185.

Let's see how this goes.

[Brent exhaling sharply]

How red is my face right now?

Whoa, yep, we'll call it good.

Four is good.

[Brent exhales sharply]

Now I've got the Forge on,

we're gonna turn it up to max support mode.

Let's see what we can do here.

[compressor whirring]

All right.

It's okay to be scared.

Here we go.

[compressor whirring]

Huh.

Definitely feeling a lot more

push

on my backs of my thighs.

I also don't feel like I'm about to have an embolism,

so that's good.

I can still have a conversation,

so that's good too.

Oh yeah.

Am definitely feeling it, though.

Let's call that failure.

Eight!

I'm pretty happy with that.

I'm gonna go pass out for a second here.

It's fine.

Everything's fine.

So the Forge isn't built to assist with your running,

but it is built in such a way

that it shouldn't impede your running.

So when it's powered off, it's not getting in my way,

but it's not assisting either.

It's not designed to assist, but let's see what happens.

[compressor whirring] That's never gonna get old.

[Brent chuckling]

It's really huffing and puffing.

Let's go up to six.

All right.

So I can feel there's some resistance

and I can't tell if it's making it harder or easier.

Again, I'm still feeling the weight.

I'm feeling the pressure in the back of my thighs

and around my ankles,

but my knees feel totally fine right now.

So that's good.

It's not helping, but if I turn it off again.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, let's go without, definitely better without.

Yeah, so I tried at level one and at level three,

it was definitely impeding a little bit.

It's just kind of resisting against your knees

in a way that doesn't help you.

It took some of the impact off my knees, which was nice,

but I was kind of having to fight against it.

So if you gotta run with this thing, turn it off.

[Brent pants]

This is the impact test, which I'm rather nervous about.

We don't have a boat, but this is gonna simulate

that sort of high-seas situation

and the impacts that it'd be taking on my legs.

We're on the high box.

This one's a little bit scary for me.

Three,

two,

one.

[compressor whirring] Feel it on my feet.

Excuse me.

Burrito.

[crew laughing]

Actually wanna try do that one again

with a Spider-Man landing.

Oh, hell yeah.

[groovy music]

It's worth noting that while we're just

testing the Forge today,

which is designed for these types of high impacts,

Roam has two other models, the Ascend and the Elevate.

The Ascend is designed mostly for people with knee issues,

and it helps them with things like standing

and sitting and going up and down stairs.

The Elevate is made for skiers

whose knees aren't what they used to be.

I actually got to test it in Big Sky, Montana

a couple winters ago,

and it did in fact help me power through turns

with less strain on my knees.

Though, the sounds of the air compressor

in an otherwise tranquil place was pretty hard to ignore.

[compressor whirring]

So the Forge did pretty well in the lab

in some controlled testing.

So let's try a little less controlled testing.

They told me specifically that it will not help me

dunk a basketball.

We're gonna prove them wrong.

Perfect.

[groovy bass music]

All right, I'm all Forged up now.

Let's see if this improves my vertical at all.

[Brent exhales sharply]

Ah!

Mmmmmmm,

no.

Come on baby!

Ah!

I cannot fly.

I was wrong to believe that I could fly

and I feel stupid now.

Okay, fine, so it was not designed for dunking.

Let's try a few things that it was designed for.

So a more realistic scenario might be a firefighter

having to carry a person outta harm's way.

And that could be up many, many flights of stairs.

So to simulate a dead body,

we're gonna use our director Morgan, here.

Feeling dead body-ish? Let's do it.

[Brent] All right here we go.

Oh yeah, how's that feel? Excellent.

And we're going up.

Oh yeah.

[compressor whirring]

You can hear the pistons working,

but I can still kinda carry on a normal conversation,

which I was really, really not expecting.

Hi, pup.

That was actually pretty good.

[Morgan] How you doing dead body? This is my stop.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. All right.

[groaning] Not exactly the stealthiest contraption,

but if I have to make a hard landing, I am really loving it.

And if I need to sneak around, just turn it off,

and get real sneaky.

All right, let's talk highs and lows.

Highs, I was able to squat

more than my body weight eight times.

That is something I never would've been able to do

under normal circumstances.

Two, I was able to jump off a high platform with weight

and land like fricking Spider-Man.

I will do that all day long 'cause that was stupid fun.

Three, I've been on my feet all day long,

carrying weight, going up and down things,

carrying Morgan and my legs feel good.

My knees aren't really shot.

I could still do stuff.

And that's kind of a miracle in itself,

especially considering I just tweaked my knee recently.

Lows, when I didn't have the brace on

I tried to squat more than my body weight

without warming up

and I thought it was going to face plant and die.

Bad call.

Two, I may have sprained this finger

jumping out of a tree and landing awkwardly,

which was definitely my fault, but what can you do?

And three, this brace did not let me yam it

like a professional basketball player.

Truly a tragedy.

But that's actually something

that it could be programmed to do in the future,

which I think is really cool.

The other thing I couldn't ignore

about the Forge is the noise.

Right now, it sits at about 65 decibels,

which is rather prominent indoors.

[compressor whirring] He he he he!

Definitely not ready for the public library.

Once they sort that out though,

it'll be interesting to see how widespread

this type of tech becomes,

not just from Roam but from other innovators

in the personal mobility space.

With all that being said,

we've got one more test left to do.

[groovy techno music]

[compressor whirring]

[Morgan] Yes. [Brent laughing]

Beautiful.

It is important to keep it contained around your thigh,

but we're not looking to cut off circulation or to keep it-

Nobody can contain these thighs, but go on.