Robot Suit Helps Farm Workers

A new agriculture robot suit developed by the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology could soon help farm workers with the backbreaking labor of harvesting.  

The robot suit is designed specifically to help out with tough agricultural work like pulling radishes. The suit has eight motors fitted over the shoulders, elbows, back and knees to provide a power boost to the wearer. The current model weighs 55 pounds and uses 16 sensors to funtion.  if you’re looking to purchase one, it will set you back $5,000-$10,000 when it hits the commercial market in the next two years.  Designers are hoping to continue to work with the suit to reduce the weight.

The goal of the suit design was to completely eliminate the need for aging farmers to strain their joints or muscles while lifting and moving various objects.

In the demonstration at the university’s campus in the Tokyo city of Fuchu last week, the suit was used to help pull out Japanese radishes, prune tangerine trees and pick strawberries. Pulling out radishes usually exerts force on the lower back, but with the suit, the overall force required was reduced by half . Pruning work, in which the hands are held up for a long time, and picking strawberries, which requires workers to bend their backs, also strain the body heavily, but the suit enabled the tasks to be completed with virtually no exertion.

About 40 percent of agricultural workers in Japan are aged 65 or over, and there is a demand for an assistive robot device. Developers say that if 100 of the suits were sold, it would be possible to lower the price to about 300,000 yen per suit. The university is considering selling the upper and lower body parts separately.

Shigeki Toyama, a professor in robotics who developed the suit, said it can be used by anyone.

“Anyone can use it without a drop in work efficiency,” he said. “I want to increase the types of work in which it can help.”