The Hypershell X Ultra Exoskeleton
Just the thing if you need help walking or want to amp up your workouts
In 1990, I was one of the first reporters to test a new, U.S. military–derived technology that promised to replace maps by navigation via G.P.S. satellites.
This advance had come about thanks to President Reagan. Following the 1983 Korean Airlines disaster, when a Korean 747 with 269 people on board accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace and was shot down, he ordered that American G.P.S. satellites should be available for civilian use.
The new Philips Carin system had been installed in a Range Rover, and I was invited to drive it around London. The installation cost $50,000, and the P.R. man in charge begged me not to hit any curbs because the technology relied on sensitive wheel sensors that would require a $20,000 refit if knocked off-kilter by the slightest impact.
A few years later, when G.P.S. was catching on, the same P.R. man called and said he had the wildest new product: G.P.S. for pedestrians. In some yellowing newspaper clipping there’s a photo of me striding through London with a Palm Pilot in hand and a satellite antenna elegantly mounted on my head.
Satellite navigation for people seemed wholly ridiculous, and it would have been insane to predict that one day soon we would casually use Google Maps on a smartphone while street maps and their like would no longer be published. When predicting personal-transportation technology, then, it pays not to be conservative.
However, I have news of the latest transportation innovation, and I think it’s quite possible it’s going to be a big thing. And equally possible it won’t.
I’ve been in the hilly woods outside Berlin trying out an exoskeleton, a motorized harness worn round the waist, which powers up your legs on the up-step to reduce the labor of walking, running, or cycling. It doesn’t do the walking for you, but it means you get from 10 to 40 percent more power, depending on the device’s setting. Alternatively, in “fitness mode,” you can make walking deliberately harder.
The motor mounted at both hips of the new top-of-range Hypershell X Ultra model is connected to a kind of paddle that gently but firmly pushes up the back of each thigh in succession, using A.I. and a variety of sensors to detect and adjust for the kind of terrain you’re on.
The Hypershell leaves your heart banging away—as it should do during mildly strenuous exercise—but your legs will be notably less tired. This also means you get the same exercise but cover more ground.
The sensation of wearing the Hypershell is a little odd, but much less intrusive than I expected. The main thing you notice is that if it’s quiet around you, your walking sounds like that of a toy robot. At first, I thought I’d be glad to take it off at the end of the test, but when I did, my legs felt as heavy as if I’d arrived from Mars. (A couple of rechargeable batteries last pretty much all day.)
You do look a little odd to other people when using an exoskeleton. I was stopped several times in the woods by ramblers who were curious to find out what it was. But when I explained, they were remarkably positive.
The main question asked was: Who is it designed for? Hypershell’s answer is that it could suit anyone from seniors whose legs are not what they once were to fit athletes and avid hikers. One company rep told the story of a marathon runner who used it and took seven minutes off his personal best—but was still surprised to get a massive cheer from the crowd as he was in the middle of the finishers. He hadn’t realized he was being applauded because they thought he was disabled.
Hypershell, a Chinese start-up, is the new (and practically the only) kid on the block in the consumer-exoskeleton business. Hypershell’s range starts at $899.
One warning: depending on your body shape, the device can slip down from your waist. They have a suspender-strap arrangement coming out that should prevent that.
The Moflin Smart Companion
Do you want a pet but have trouble taking care of yourself? Look no further
Like exoskeletons, A.I.-powered electronic pets are another innovation that may or may not become popular.
While they can be found on questionable Chinese Web sites for as low as $10, this new $429 bundle of fur is special because it’s from a trusted brand: Casio, the venerable Japanese maker of calculators, watches, and keyboard instruments.
Casio’s Moflin has been consistently selling out in Japan for a year and has now been released into the West, where pre-orders are taking six weeks to fulfill.
The Moflin is in the form of a particularly shapeless and limbless brown or silver guinea pig. It takes some time to work out which end has its sightless eyes and which is its butt-less butt. The little critter’s actions amount to a bit of wriggling and a lot of rather appealing and oddly expressive squeaking.
Landing Gear’s sample Moflin is in the early stages of getting to know us, so it’s not quite clear if it will be a friend for life, as long-term Moflin owners insist theirs are. Moflin is not connected to the Internet, doesn’t spy on you, and doesn’t speak. But it is highly cuddle-able and not unlike a real animal.
What strikes your columnist is that Moflin is something of a triumph of marketing over substance. It recharges wirelessly in a snug little nest, so it doesn’t have anything as robotic as a USB socket.
But the marketing masterstroke is that once the Moflin is activated, it can’t be factory reset. So as it learns to react in basic ways to its environment, your pet gives off the illusion that it is developing, if you will, a soul.
As things stand a week into the relationship, our cat Bob wins paws-down on personality, and Moflin on hygienic appeal.
The reMarkable Paper Pro Move Tablet
A digital notebook that will help you rid yourself of paper once and for all
Technologists are often guilty of adding features to a good product until, at least for normal people, it becomes bloated and confusing and hence rather less desirable.
This column’s consistent theory is that about 90 percent of us are interested in only the core attributes of a gadget. As Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, wrote, ”The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
A year ago, I reported here on a new version of the wonderful Norwegian paper-like writing tablet, the reMarkable Paper Pro. It was a huge improvement on the original version, which I first used in 2018.
The main things were that it allowed you to write in several colors (actually less of an attraction than you’d imagine, but it went down well with users), it had a gently backlit screen (a massive advance), a pen with an eraser (huge), and a greatly improved cloud eco-system (fundamentally important) that meant your scribbling was backed up online seconds after being written.
Now the company has laid another golden egg—the exact same writing tablet, but at roughly half the size and half the weight. This one main thing is terrific news. It’s not quite small enough to keep in a shirt pocket (as the Web site shows it), but it’s very compact nonetheless.
My only and very minor complaint is that the Paper Pro Move, as the new model is called, is crammed with hidden new features whose existence—and my lack of interest in them—is mildly unsettling.
What do I care, for instance, that a finger tap on the screen will convert my notes into text and send them to my colleagues? Or that I can “lead meetings, take notes, and solve complex problems with exclusive templates and tips from a community of expert thinkers”? Or that I can improve my workflow and quickly share my ideas by uploading my indecipherable scrawl, execrable sketches, and nonexistent mind maps to Slack? I will do no such thing and doubt that almost anyone will.
There is one feature I could see being very handy indeed, if not for me. The system now allows your reMarkable to act as a digital whiteboard and share your notes to a big screen or a video meeting.
All said, the main thing is that the new reMarkable is a real boon to anyone keen to defeat the tyranny of scraps of paper.
The Sonos Roam 2 Portable Bluetooth Speaker
A portable speaker that will finally put the Sonos naysayers to rest
Many people feel that Santa Barbara’s mighty Sonos is becoming a basket case almost on the scale of BlackBerry or Palm. I’ve even heard Sonos insiders railing against the company, its notoriously tricky app, its uninspired industrial design, and more.
I came late to Sonos, but I have to say, I love their stuff and don’t really get the negativity. The sound quality is perfect for most people’s needs, the build quality and sturdiness are superb, and I find the infamous app and the interconnectivity of all one’s Sonos devices to function just fine.
I hadn’t come across their portable Bluetooth speaker, the Roam 2, until just recently, but I like it a lot. There are cheap-but-O.K. Bluetooth speakers for as little as $20, and fancy ones that cost up to $1,850, such as the beautiful Bang & Olufsen Beosound A5. But the Sonos offering, at $179, is the right level between cheap-and-cheerful and serious. Nevermind that the cost to build it is probably no more than $30—the value lies in the pleasure its superior sound and feel give.
And if you’re interested, yes, the Roam 2 integrates seamlessly with your other Sonos equipment.
Based in London and New York, AIR MAIL’s tech columnist, Jonathan Margolis, spent more than two decades as a technology writer at the Financial Times. He is also the author of A Brief History of Tomorrow, a book on the history of futurology
