Gadgetory

so you've seen me client sir Kelly played it's perfect artificial wave get shocked by the full-body Tesla suit and lift plenty of heavy boxes this is beta test live on the scene at stage at CES and I'm Lexy CBDs if you're wondering what I'm wearing it is an exoskeleton by airframe it's that's the name of the product and the company is levitate I am joined by Joseph so why did Joseph welcome to see us thank you so much for having thank you for bringing in this exoskeleton now for people that aren't familiar with exoskeletons what exactly is it and what does it do yes this is an ergonomic technology that supports the upper extremity of factory workers surgeons consumers in general so it's worn as an ergonomic device that is considered like any other personal protective equipment so in a factory building cars or airplanes you can come in put in your earplugs put in your safety shoes your safety glasses and your airframe to protect the musculoskeletal system of your upper body like the shoulder and neck and back that you would suit up with it another day on the factory assembly right right so let's walk through some of the components I mean obviously it's kind of like a backpack in how I put it on maybe I'll turn around and you can kind of point out each of the components that I'm wearing absolutely it's very much like backpacking backpacks so you've got the frame that is rigid made out of aluminum that goes all the way down the spine to the outside of the hips so what this rigid frame does is it takes the load off your arms through a spring and pulley and cable mechanism inside what we call the cassette and then that weight of your arms is offloaded onto the spine not to your lower back but to the outside of these struts to the outside of the hips so this is taking all of that weight for me essentially so I'm not exercising much of my muscle capacity correct correct instead of using a hundred percent of your muscle you are using 70 to 80 percent of your muscle so when we take ten to thirty percent off the edge that's what makes the big difference in reducing injury reducing fatigue and not impacting productivity so what you're saying is really I could potentially be Ironman Ryan potentially potentially excellent okay so where is this being currently used like do you have clients that are using it in factories like real world situations right now we absolutely do we've been deploying hundreds of them at single factories we have 80 global customers in the US central and southern America Canada Europe and Japan one of our biggest customers and unfortunately a lot of them don't allow us to talk about our sales but I can name some great companies like Toyota Textron aviation BMW manufacture we are in five plants in North America Toyota so it's being used a lot in a lot of different places to help and also the whole point is to help workers stop getting injured and to help them work more effectively essentially okay so you and I are wearing slightly different models aren't we so this is the regular airframe this one it looks a little different I can notice there the fabric is a little bit different it's blue what is this one so this is our latest innovation and addition to our product line and it is our fire retardant airframe oh I could you get sparks or anything it's totally fire retardant absolutely it is either covered by fire retardant fabric or all the buckles all the straps all the soft goods are fire retardant so all the material you see here is different than the material you have you don't want to have a welder put this on and have the sparks create fire so they put on their welding jacket and put on this airframe on top of it and it's just like the one you're wearing functional just the same but it can be used for welding and what we call hot work such as grinding and sanding and so forth so it's a whole new line of products that we're introducing one of them is this FR version I'm kind of scared to know the sort of testing that you had to do to make sure that it was really fire resistant the US Navy was kind enough to actually do the testing they looked at all the specs they made sure that we did everything right and they validated it and they actually approved its testing that in Seattle by the Navy so we got the green light from them to start manufacturing and providing them the product we're looking at some of some footage of it actually being used in current settings in factories right now so there's a lot of overhead work there like drilling and things like that and obviously this is going to support the arms in order to make that easier right correct correct excellent okay so obviously that's a factory specific situation but we've kind of simulated something a little bit factory like here we have some shelves and I think you're gonna put me to work yes I think okay so let's start turning turning things on right now it is deactivated okay and if you could get your arms I will just activate both sides and I asked you to swing your arms back okay and now it's active okay my arms are just totally just being held up automatically like I I don't feel like I'm doing anything I'm just you know the force goes away so you can okay so I'm moving around normally now yes and my arms are up and I can stand here all day I don't know why I would yes in a normal situation but if I was in a factory doing things involving a lot of reaching out that would be very handy absolutely it's like a helping hand you know when you raise your arm and you start to feel that fatigue yeah that's when the mechanism kicks in and it goes away when your arms are dropped so I notice there are cartridges here and is that for a different level of strength it is you have six different levels of strength and the number that you see there if I can point that out you are wearing a number three cassette so that's in the middle of the range of the support level we you can have the right size arm rest right size cassette right size frame these frames come in four different sizes the cassettes come in multiple levels so they're the armrests once we configure it for you it's set that way and you never have to change it again nice and so what are these components that we have here this is all part of it this is these are all accessories that our customers have actually asked us to do okay so we are there always finding new needs for their exoskeleton this is the mini version of the headrest that you are wearing sometimes they're wearing hard hats in the factory the idea of this headrest is if I'm doing something over hello it's quite comforting actually I couldn't just sit here and look at the ceiling if I wanted to yes and it wouldn't put any strain on my head if you look up more than two minutes without a headrest you'll start feeling the strain it takes that away again it doesn't take away all the muscle activity it takes away 20 to 30 percent of the muscle activity and that's crucial in order to help prevent injury right it's that excess inflammation you know at the end of the day when the worker goes that aching is what we get rid of okay let's try this out I actually want to try this out because that's the whole point of this show is I get to try things yes okay so what am I going to be doing here picking and packing all right yes one of the latest entries into the exoskeleton world for us is picking and packing at fulfillment centers so what we wanted to do is simulate a picking and packing environment which people do all day long at fulfillment centers like Amazon Walgreens whatever the case may be and we want you to do exactly what they do which is put the bottles as and you can imagine these being any type of merchandise put them in here just close it as if you taped it and you push it to the conveyor belt alright we'd like to do the cycle once without the exoskeleton being activated so let's deactivate if you get your arm out one more time alright so if you don't mind then go at it with five bottles in here and five all right here we go putting me to work packing I mean three four five take it out seal up the box push it aside and two three coming in okay so it's not that strenuous right now because I only did eight bottles correct but if I was doing that for eight hours a day five days a week that would be incredibly strenuous that same repetitive motion okay so now I have an idea of what that's like we're gonna put them all back yep that was without the exoskeleton was out without the airframe so let's try this again one more time see there's a lot of fiji water here yeah I saw you were going off to the Golden Globes name alright let's reactivate okay we go and repeat the task okay oh yeah it's so much easier because it feels like I have very little activation in my upper arm very very little like I I feel like most of the work and it's not even work it's just coming from my hand just to grab yes so it's not strenuous at all if I'm not so clumsy and drop the water bottle okay that is yeah incredibly so much easier I mean it doesn't place your arm right it just arguments it just enough to take the edge off exactly exactly right sorry that's for like picking and packing what about lifting and other kind of motions like that will this help with that it does not help with lifting it is not a lumbar support technology what it does is it's for movement of the arms whether it's static or repetitive so if you're welding all day long or picking and packing one other type of work that you referenced earlier is overhead work this happens a lot we are currently working with a fulfillment center that is being built and you have to install the water sprinklers in a million square foot facility that's a lot of installation a lot of installation so they use it to build the fulfillment center and then they use it for their picking attackers and Pickers when they get in there but I want you to just hold this up for a couple of seconds with the airframe activated and then I want to remove it from your arm and you tell me the difference of what it does for you I mean this is very comfortable like I could stay here feasibly for I think I could probably lost ten minutes in this position easily I was pleased yeah I mean it doesn't feel uncomfortable at all okay so if I'm gonna put it down now no actually leave it there okay leave your arm in the same position and I'm just gonna do this at all that is not so uncomfortable I can feel it all there and my bicep I mean great if you want to be doing some weight training but doing this every day at work so incredibly repetitive and so very painful it is it makes such a difference it really is you know these these workers work so hard companies like Toyota they don't call them workers they call them team members because these people are building the cars that they are selling so they want to take care of them as much as they can because they know that they a can get tired the end of the day so with us we feel it right away with these people they live with it every day so it's making a very big difference for them so let's talk about price if I wanted to buy one of these and I'm an everyday consumer what are we looking at so we are currently not marketing into the consumer world [Laughter] we're you know we we have a lot of these big companies that are constantly working with us to do studies and to improve the technology and they're buying them in large numbers for their workers it retails at the distributor level for five thousand dollars just under five thousand dollars and obviously is there a bulk discount because probably you're buying hundreds of them at a time correct when we work with a company like Toyota for example there's definitely some special pricing this is being fantastic thank you so much for coming in Joseph and showing me all about the airframe i levitate it's been a pleasure