This magic exoskeleton for industrial workers is the future—we know, we wore one

RICHMOND, Calif.—Wearing Ekso Bionics’ forthcoming exoskeleton for construction and industrial workers is probably the closest that I will ever come to having a real physical superpower.

Through the magic of gravity and amazing industrial and mechanical design, a 40-pound industrial tool that I was holding became totally weightless. After just a few minutes, I quickly figured out that if I let the tool go it would fly off into space, as if gravity had no effect on it at all.

The Ekso Works suit is slated to hit the market in 2016 in the "tens of thousands of dollars" range. (One financial analyst, Jeffrey Cohen, believes it will cost about $12,000.)

Ekso Bionics hopes that within a few years, this suit will become as commonplace as other large tools that major construction firms would bring to a job site. If the company’s projections are right, the Ekso Works will set the company on the path to profitability: an elusive goal over the last decade.

The exoskeleton is incredibly neat: there are shoe-like platforms that fit beneath my shoes. (Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Russ Angold told me that I was the first to wear the exoskeleton over a pair of Birkenstock sandals—as someone who works at home barefoot nearly everyday, that is my footwear of choice.) Going up my legs were some large velcro straps and bendable metal brackets following up to my knees. There, a hinge allowed me to bend and jump as normal. When the exoskeleton rose up to my hip area, it met a metal ring that went around my entire waist.

There, at my right hip, was a strange device where a large swing arm fit into a socket. At the business end of this arm was what I thought was a 30 to 40 pound power sander, or some other large power tool. As someone who spends his days behind a computer screen, and not at large industrial job sites, my familiarity with substantial power tools is quite limited.

Connected further up my torso was a stripped down backpack—replete with two traditional shoulder straps—but also with a column along my upper back area for Angold to drop weighted discs onto, to act as a counterweight. The suit is totally mechanical: it has no battery of any kind.

As Angold was strapping me in, he performed what seemed like a well-rehearsed demo, handing me this massive power tool that looked like an oversized power sander. It had an inverted L-shaped handle, with my left hand holding the short end of the L, and my right hand holding a lower grip.

"Here, hold this," he said, as I took it, and I struggled a little bit to keep it upright. "Now imagine you’re holding this thing for four, five, six hours a day."

Angold grinned.

But once I had the suit on, all of the weight was gone. The swing arm and the exoskeleton took off all of the weight, as if while on a hike, I had set my backpack down on a rock while it was still on me. The arm was incredibly fluid, there was no jerkiness or hesitation as I moved it around in all directions.

Walking was a little awkward, but even easier than expected, and Angold assured me that if I continued wearing it, my gait would become closer to normal as my brain figured it out.

"We figured out how to support weight without any power," Angold said. "Some of the patents are on load carriage."

Expanding construction

Ekso Bionics launched 10 years ago as an outgrowth of research from the nearby Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. After a name change a couple of years later, the company released the HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier)—a Defense Department-funded project designed for soldiers.

By 2009, the company licensed its technology to Lockheed Martin to work on potentially competitive products and advance the general technology. The next year, the company released its "eLEGS,"—an intelligent, bionic exoskeleton that actually allows wheelchair users to stand and walk over ground.

Not long after, in 2012, the company debuted its flagship product, the "Ekso," an exoskeleton designed to help people regain mobility after a spinal or other injury.

On a recent visit, when Ars editor Megan Geuss and I stepped into the Ekso Bionics reception area, actual bells rang out throughout the office, we could hear some whooping in the back office area. Apparently the company had just sold four Eksos within the last hour.

"We’re all about helping people," Angold explained as he walked us through the office area, which is tucked in a converted section of the Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant.

“That is really cool”

The construction industry is set to expand significantly in the coming years. In 2013, Arcadis, a construction consultancy, reported that construction output will grow by more than 70 percent to $15 trillion worldwide by 2025.

"By 2050, there'll be two billion additional city dwellers—sustainable urbanization will be a major construction challenge and the industry must strive to find innovative new products and solutions, to contribute to building better cities," Bruno Lafont, chairman of Lafarge, a building materials company, said in a statement at the time.

As the skilled construction workforce gets older, and with fewer younger workers coming up to replace them, older workers can potentially work longer and suffer from fewer injuries with an exoskeleton.

If Ekso Bionics can capture even a small slice of those future construction jobs, it seems set to do well.

But, as someone who knows very little about large-scale construction sites, I started asking around: would this be something that workers would actually want?

I called up Wayne Creasap, senior director of Environmental Health and Safety, with the Association of Union Constructors.

After I explained the exoskeleton to him, and he found some pictures online, the line went silent for a moment before he said: "That is really cool."

"I think it has merit. There are things where it could have applicability in certain instances," he continued. "I think there would be an interest in the industry to see how this technology develops."

But he also raised another point that I hadn’t fully considered: if a construction team is only going to have a few suits on a job site, doesn’t that stratify those workers?

"How do you decide which of those five gets to wear the suit?" he told Ars. "Then if the other people get injured because they weren’t wearing the suit, then what kind of liability does that open up? That kind of runs into some potential issues. In addition to the cost, what kind of maintenance is required for these things?"

Creasap said in a follow-up e-mail that he could see fabrication shops benefiting from the exoskeleton because they don't have a high turnover like field construction jobs.

Coming soon

As Ekso Bionics gets ready for its 2016 release, defense contractor Lockheed Martin has already been working on its own version, called FORTIS, based on its license from Ekso Bioinics.

"The U.S. Navy first acquired two FORTIS exoskeletons for use in its shipyards last year," Melissa Hillard, a Lockheed Martin spokeswoman told Ars by e-mail.

"In addition to units in use by the Navy, we are currently working with commercial shipbuilders and other industrial companies whose operations might benefit from FORTIS."

She noted that FORTIS is "available for purchase now," but did not provide a specific price, nor range.

"Price depends on specific order quantities and aggregate order quantities," she wrote. "Lockheed Martin is the first to offer an industrial exoskeleton for purchase. FORTIS performs very well in adverse environments. It is designed for workers using riveters, grinders, sandblasters, drills or other heavy tools in manufacturing and industrial environments."

Angold said that the FORTIS became available before Ekso's industrial product.

Ekso Bionics released its latest earnings numbers show that the company made $1.7 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2015, compared to $1.1 million during the same period in 2014. (The company lost $4.1 million during the first quarter of 2015.)

Jeffrey Cohen, an analyst with Ladenburg Thalmann, has described Ekso Bionics as a "jewel," and recently told the San Francisco Business Times that he expected it to be profitable by the end of 2018.

Cohen wrote in a recent investors' note sent to Ars that Ekso Bionics is "at the forefront of pioneering the field of human robotic exoskeleton to augment human strength, endurance and mobility."

"We believe the Company's vast experience, commercial offerings, research & development, partnerships and collaborations, and product developments position it well to be a current and future leader for exoskeletal related technologies and their various applications for society going forward," he added.