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Ask HN: Could a newborn baby walk and run by wearing an exoskeleton?

8 points by amichail ↗ HN
If necessary, a real-time brain scanner could be used to allow movement based on neural activation patterns.

Perhaps such an exoskeleton could even accelerate a baby's brain development?

23 comments

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walterbell
Maybe nature has already pre-scheduled brain development not related to walking & running? Calculators & exoskeletons are augmentative after basic skills exist, otherwise the brain would be completely dependent on the external crutch.
amichail
The exoskeleton need not be worn 24/7.
walterbell
Have exoskeleton market development teams tried such experiments on young animals? It would be interesting to see the developmental growth results of a statistically valid sample, assuming such experiments are ethically ok.
crpatino
No, sorry. You are too ignorant on too many subjects to realize just how ignorant you are. And if you try to go ahead with this idea of your, you will cross the barrier into criminally-negligent-ignorance. Just don't!

Children are not small adults, and babies are not small children either. It is not like your present self going to a tennis class on the weekends and leaving it aside the rest of the week. Every stimulus during the first few days/weeks of life outside the womb has a disproportionate effects on the neural development of the individual.

Using a computer engineering analogy, babies are "pre-programmed" by millions of years of evolution to "bootstrap" their brains through "machine learning". Mess with the "trainning set" and you will cripple the result for a lifetime.

This is the kind of experiment (on mammals) that can get PETA all over you. Just considering its hypothetical use on humans is pretty much the stuff 007!Mad-scientists are made off.

walterbell
This hypothetical question involves an exoskeleton and neurofeedback.

Hopefully it remains hypothetical and does not become a mad-scientist methodology for using babies to bootstrap a neural network that teaches robots how to walk.

crpatino
That's not what I had in mind... though it's pretty scary and downright evil. I read the OP as trying to use robots to teach babies how to walk, not the other way around.

I was thinking more in the lack of practical purpose of the endeavor itself[1]. Something that potentially causes a bunch of collateral damage for no clear purpose. Human babies have been learning to walk on their own for about a million years unaided, just like every walking animal before them.

[1] Lampshaded here (kind of): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnMaroAlfvI

rthomas6
I have a six week old son. He is actually quite strong already, but he doesn't have much control over his own body. He will scratch himself in the face to the point of bleeding if he's upset and he's not wearing mittens/his nails aren't trimmed. He can straighten his legs and body out and it takes a surprising amount of force to unstraighten them (if you need to, say, clothe him or change his diaper). Babies already have a device that allows movement based on neural activation patterns... it's called a body. They just have to learn how to use it.
waps
The unstraightening thing is actually because of the construction of the bones. The bones bend a little, just a little, more than straight and there is a muscle that can pull on the other side. This locks legs in place when straightened, but still maintains a spring-like mechanism protecting the weak points in the bone structure (because it's not actually straight, it makes an angle).

A baby is actually too weak to hold himself up. I'm not saying that that's the only problem, but his muscles are certainly not capable of holding his body off the ground the first 2-3 months. That's why it's important to put them on their belly (but not leave them like that for more than 30 minutes or so), and ideally try to help them crawl, roll and walk, even when they can't. They'll love standing up, and hanging from the side of the cot. Plus they'll love the attention.

And don't worry about babies and young kids falling over. Their skeleton can actually absorb more force than yours can (because it isn't nearly as rigid as yours, which probably also means it's much harder to walk with). In addition to that, they weigh less, and F=ma, so they can easily survive drops that would kill or severely injure an adult.

rthomas6
We give him "tummy time", as they called it at the hospital classes. He can and does hold his head up quite frequently, but he is not yet able to push off the ground with his arms. This probably isn't of any interest, I am just doing the new parent thing where I tell everyone about my kid.
Piskvorrr
TL;DR: No.

A newborn baby is not a CPU+motherboard which just needs to grow the other peripherals and BAM it all just snaps into place, nor is it a tiny adult with fully functional tiny appendages.

A newborn needs to develop all sorts of skills - starting with breathing patterns & sleep patterns, not to mention feeding. Yes, these things become automatic pretty quickly; however, the baby needs to "bootstrap" itself from the absolute basics provided by reflex, iteratively, to more and more complex tasks - it cannot start in the middle of the "technology tree," to use a metaphor from strategic games, as it would lack the underlying capabilities. Muscle coordination (in other words, developing the neural activation patterns whose existence you're presupposing), sensory input (movement w/o vision, very useful) and cross-referencing the inputs/outputs comes much, much later.

Now, with a 6-month-old, that exoskeleton of yours might be actually workable (in theory) - but a newborn? No way at all; your view of human biology is rather cartoonish: we're not starting out with a complete brain which just needs some muscles, the brain develops alongside the rest of the organism.

waps
Plus it'd be extremely stupid to give someone who is learning basic coordination control over a force that can severely damage things, including him/herself. Not because of potential defects in the exoskeleton, mind you, but because the baby will simply use it to do random things, like punch himself in the face, or scratch, or ... If you give him a tool that makes punching himself in the face fatal, ... well ...

We all know what inevitably happens if you give a 1 year old a stick. Giving them a powerful robot ... just don't.

Just don't.

dllthomas
You could possibly build sanity checks into the exoskeleton. Not at all saying that makes it actually a good idea...
Piskvorrr
Or you could, perhaps, wait for the user to actually develop their own sanity checks. Just sayin'.

(OTOH, yes, you could theoretically build a transhuman baby into an exoskeleton; this would mean that the baby would learn to exist in the world as if the exoskeleton were a natural part of its body - but such baby would need the exoskeleton forever, as it would learn to control its body very differently than a baby without it)

dllthomas
Yeah, like I said, probably still not actually a good idea. An interesting thought experiment, though.
Stwerp
While I agree with you, its worth noting that newborns do exhibit a walking reflex (that usually disappears after a few weeks). I would not completely rule out the possibility of a newborn walking with an exoskeleton -- the problem seems to be that their muscles cannot support weight or balance.

Cheesy example video, but the first after a quick search: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJIcKkxx7wg

Edit: and now I see that someone has already mentioned this in the other comments.

Perdition
>the problem seems to be that their muscles cannot support weight or balance.

It does? Newborns can support their own weight when hanging. Most toddlers can support their own weight standing long before they develop the coordination required to walk. Babies lack fine motor control.

Our ancestors, with less complex brains, would have been able to walk shortly after birth, hence the walking reflex.

I suspect the issue is that the complexity of modern human brains delays the formation of the neural circuits required for walking because a whole bunch of complex features are developing at the same time.

Stwerp
I do see your point but still, a newborn cannot support their head by themselves. Having the muscle ability to be able to hold ones head up is a fairly good prerequisite for being able to walk.
seren
I am not sure if you are aware, but if you hold a newborn baby under its arm, it will make a walking motion in the air with its legs. This is likely the remnant of a legacy behavior that was useful a few millions years ago. I don't know how the test is called but it is part of the standard test protocol at birth. I am not sure if this is part of Agpar score [0] or called something else.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apgar_score

davelnewton
Babies can't control their own bodies, how would it control an additional one?
djent
Maybe easier than a baby-exoskeleton would be a zero gravity or extremely low gravity situation. I'd imagine balance is one of the only things that keeps babies from walking, and you can't fall over if there's little to no gravity pulling you down.