Bionic Pants – Wearable Chairs
Bionic pants are mechanical structures which almost form an exoskeleton when worn on the lower body. They move along with the limbs when the wearer walks and acts as a support when the wearer chooses to sit, behaving like a chair. They are also called Chairless chairs. The device is strapped to the lower limbs and holds them in place when the wearer assumes a sitting position, saving him from falling.
These devices came into use around a few years ago, and one of the companies that brought out this life-changing invention was a start-up in Zurich called Noonee. The company CEO, Keith Gunura, had realised the need for something like this while working in a UK packing facility. Packing facilities require their workers to keep standing while working for very long hours, and Keith had understood that something had to be done without taking up space in the working area by bringing in actual chairs because the cramped up space couldn’t allow that. Thus, this led him to bring up the bionic chairs, one of the first of their kind.
Uses of bionic pants or wearable chairs –
- Bionic pants are very useful for factory workers who must keep standing for long hours. The lower limbs of the body are continually exhausted in this way resulting in health problems, muscle pulls, strains, and permanent issues in the knees and heels of the worker, and all of this can be avoided by just letting the workers sit at regular intervals, and the bionic pants do exactly that. At a working facility, workers do not always sit and therefore having permanent chairs allotted to each one of them in the cramped up space of the factory is inconvenient. The bionic pants are a very big respite in these situations.
- Factory workers, who need to carry a lot of weight, strain and overexert their knees over time. The bionic pants are strapped to the knees, which provide a lot of support. Normally, these wearable chairs can carry around 400 pounds of weight, but an allowance for extra weight has been made, which comes in handy when the worker carries heavy weight.
- Doctors, especially surgeons, need to carry out exhausting surgeries for hours in the end; some critical surgeries are around 10 hours long. Bionic pants are a boon to them as they can take necessary breaks by sitting down and even sit down while working. The strain from bending over a patient and working for hours endlessly leads to less focus, which can be easily resolved using bionic pants.
Advantages of using bionic pants
- This can be a very promising invention for disabled workers though a lot more improvements need to be made to make these chairs functional for them.
- These pants have a very light frame made of aluminium and carbon; thus, they are extremely flexible. On assuming the sitting position, they strap in place to provide support and quickly change to standing when the worker gets up. They even provide enough flexibility to run.
- They provide the wearer with the ability to sit anytime and anywhere, thus making it one of the most comfortable equipments for factory and facility workers who already have very strenuous jobs.
- These pants help to reduce the risk of skeletal and muscular disorders and help to improve pains in hip joints, knee joints and ankle joints.
- These pants are size and weight independent of the wearer. The body size does not matter when wearing these pants because they adjust to any body shape. The body weight does not matter as long as it is within the permissible range, around 400 pounds. The chairs direct the weight of the wearer towards their heels and balance the person. The size of the safety shoes also does not matter because the device adjusts to that.
- The posture of factory workers is often permanently damaged, and their backs are alarmingly strained, leading to back aches. The bionic pants help to improve posture and avoid back strains but let wearers sir and stretch and relax anytime, in mid-air.
- One of this device’s biggest advantages is that it takes up no space. They only take up as much space as the wearer takes up. When not in use, the chairs are there on the lower body of the wearer, and thus, cramped-up workspaces are saved from excess clutter.
Companies selling Bionic pants –
- None- the Chairolution: This is one of the first companies to have invested in this market, headed by CEO Keith Gunura. Their older version of the bionic pants cost around USD 2450. The newer version, Chairless chair 2.0, costs around USD 4400.
- Trees: The South Korean company has bionic pant models similar to Noonee. They cost around USD 900
- Aracelis Wearable chairs: These chairs by a Japanese company called Nitto were designed for doctors and surgeons, and thus they are also called medical chairs. They cost much more than other companies as they are meant for doctors.
- LEX Wearable chairs: These models are specially designed to move the weight of the attached backpack to the core of the body, making it comfortable to sit on. These cost around USD 300.
- Honda’s walk-assist: The Japanese company has released these Chairless chairs that cost around a fortune and are very difficult for the masses to procure thought. Honda plans to target the Japanese market because there is steady ageing in the Japanese population.
- Audi Chairless chairs: The popular German company has released bionic pants in the market for a fortune, and as of now, these are quite unaffordable for the common masses.
On a concluding note
The attempt to develop bionic pants and make them available to the common masses in the market has been going on for decades. The cost of producing these devices is quite huge; thus, making them available for the masses at an affordable price has yet not been achieved. Most people worldwide are unaware of this invention because we can find only a few articles on the internet about this device, and owing to the huge amount of money they cost, they aren’t known in the market.
In the future, improvisations and modifications would reduce the production cost of these bionic pants, making them more available for the masses. This invention has the potential to become one of the biggest inanimate assistants to humankind. We can hope to have the opportunity to thrive in the presence of such inventions in the future.
