According to an article in the October issue of IEEE Spectrum, the very first commercially available exoskeleton, scheduled to hit the market in Japan in November, is designed to help elderly and disabled people walk and carry things. Built by Cyberdyne in Tsukuba, Japan, the exoskeleton, called HAL-5, will cost about 1.5 million yen (around US $13 800).

Meanwhile, in the United States, the most advanced exoskeleton projects are at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Sarcos Research Corp., in Salt Lake City. Both are funded under a $40 million, five-year program begun by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2001.

According to the Spectrum article, during the past several months each group has been field-testing a second-generation exoskeleton that is a huge improvement over its predecessor.

At long last, exoskeletons, once the stuff of science fiction, are on the verge of proving themselves in military and civilian applications.

This new generation of anthropomorphic, untethered, and self-powered exoskeletons is marrying humans' decision-making capabilities wwith machines' dexterity and brute force. They've got the brains to control the brawn.

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