Vimal Govind Manikandan, an engineering student from Kerala has built a wearable robot at a cost of just Rs 50,000. The fully functional suit weighs around 100 kg and can lift up to 150kg. The only feature this suit lacks from making it the one Tony Stark owns is that it cannot help you fly.
Speaking about his innovation, Manikandan told a leading daily, "Actually the future of this product is mainly in defence, industrial weight lifting, material handling etc."
American Society of Research (ASR) had organised a conference in Singapore on Mechanics and Manufacturing (ICMM 2016) and Manikandan there presented his robot.
Out of the 13 countries that presented, Manikandan's paper was selected as the best and will be published in the International Journal of Mechanical and Robotics Research soon.
Manikandan said that he was inspired by Hollywood movies, especially the ones in the Avengers movies, to build the robot.
To note, this is not the first exosuit. His team had also built their first prototype back in 2015, which was much larger but mechanically-powered.
