The winner of this year's James Dyson award is the Titan Arm, a battery-powered upper-body exoskeleton. Image: Dyson It was created by a group of students at University of Pennsylvania--the first American team to win the award in its nine year run. Image: Dyson The Titan Arm isn't the first exoskeleton, but it may be the first of its kind. Image: Dyson With a powered elbow, it adds about 40 pounds of strength to the wearer. Image: Dyson The most promising application is in rehabilitation. Since the self-contained device doesn't have to be tethered to any other source, it could be used by patients in their homes. Image: Dyson A detail of a machined part. Image: Dyson With the $45,000 prize, the team hopes to continue exploring the device's possibilities. Image: Dyson

Elysium proved that even doughy dudes like Matt Damon could be futuristic action heroes with the help of a high-tech exoskeleton. That may have been science fiction, but there's still hope for the rest of us. The Titan Arm, a breakthrough upper-body exoskeleton developed by a group of students at University of Pennsylvania, offers a very real taste of Hulk-like super strength. Even more usefully, though, the device stands to totally change the way we think about physical therapy.

Today, the Titan Arm was announced as the winner of this year's James Dyson Award, the serial innovator's annual student competition. an annual competition held by the serial innovator. The University of Pennsylvania team, made up of Elizabeth Beattie, Nick McGill, Nick Parrotta, and Niko Vladimirovm, will get $45,000 (with another $15,000 or so going to their school) and an avalanche of publicity for their project. They're the first American team to take the top prize in the competition's 9 year history.

It's certainly not the first working exoskeleton, but in many ways it's the first of its kind. Development started last year when the students were fishing around for something "sufficiently complex" to for their undergraduate senior project. Research started by taking a close look at what was out there. The tea found that there were many lower body exoskeletons, designed to help with locomotion, and several full body devices for augmenting strength but far fewer that focused specifically on rehabilitating the upper body. "There were a few that existed, but they were in the research phase," McGill explains.

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One of those was a project out of a lab in Tokyo that used pressurized air to drive the super-strength poweres. That, however, required that the exoskeleton was tethered to a pneumatic pump–severely limiting both the rehabilitative and world-saving potential. The students started thinking about the benefits of a totally independent exoskeleton–something that was battery-powered, and thus could be worn freely. A device, for example, that could allow a patient to do their physical therapy in their own home, even if it were in the countryside. With the goal settled, they got down to work.

In its current form, the Titan Arm focuses on one mechanized joint–the elbow–giving the user roughly a 40-pound boost in strength. The team settled on a cable drive system which works similarly to the brakes on a bike. The main advantage was that it let the arm draw from a battery pack that could be worn on the back, thus allowing for the mobility they'd set out to achieve. What's more is that they did it all with just $2,000 or so in components.

"We loved the way it had been executed," Sir Dyson himself says of the design. "The previous versions of this thing were mounted on the necks and shoulders, or the lower back, but utilizing the whole back was a great step forward. We liked the fact that they'd actually made it work. And the fact that they know how to make it much cheaper than existing exoskeleton arms is really important. I gather this kind of thing isn't usually covered by medical insurance."

Indeed, even in their early prototyping phases, emails started to trickle in to the team from people who'd caught wind of the work. For individuals who have suffered from a stroke, for example, something as simple as cooking with a cast iron skillet can be too burdensome. With the Titan Arm come the promise of rebuilding strength in their own home–and even in their own kitchen.

McGill says the team will use the prize money to continue development on project. The powered elbow can already offer a rehab patients a crucial boost in strength, but adding a second powered joint could open up all sorts of exciting options. With two points of actuation, for example, the team could measure resistance to see how those joints are being used–in effect quantifying the process of recovery. That would be a huge step forward for this sort of rehab, for both doctors and patients alike. "Some people don't know they're even improving," McGill says.

Dyson was impressed with the project's ambition, but he wasn't surprised. Young designers and engineers are instinctively inclined to build things that help people, he says. "Students naturally want to do projects that are worthy. And I mean that in a very positive way. The first three winners this year were all people trying to help other people. I think that's a great characteristic of all student projects. They're people who want to change the world and make the world a better place. Often they're not thinking commercially. Which is great, because companies think commercially. Students don't."