Cyberdyne and EKSO’s Bionic Skeleton

Cyberdyne, a Japanese company, received CE mark for it’s HAL (hybrid assistive limb) for rehab use. It is designed to help people with lower-body disability to walk. The current model is for rehab use only, not to be taken home for daily use.

Similarly, an American company called EKSO Bionics has developed a bionic suit to enable individuals with various levels of paralysis to hemiparesis to stand up and walk.

The skeleton suit has multiple walk modes to actuates steps with a button, to steps via user control, to achieve next step by moving hips, or to step by user’s weight shift..

Intuitive Surgical Released Their New Robotic Surgical System, da Vinci Xi.

On April 1^st (hope this is not a joke), 2014, Intuitive Surgical announce their new da Vinci Xi surgical system, which is a robotic surgical system intended for minimal invasive surgeries in gynecology, urology, thoracic, cardiac, and general surgery. The company was once elected as one of the 5 worst performing medical device firms of 2013, mainly because of their lawsuits regarding the induced injuries and casualties with the use of the system. Now the company is seeking a better year in 2014 with the new robot system. Even though the first quarter of 2014 didn't show a strong rebound on sales, the imperative robotic surgical technique rendered by Intuitive Surgical will push the use of robots in surgical suite an inevitable solution to provide a better quality of patient's life. 

More reading at: http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/