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Automobiles => Other Transportation => Topic started by: MG on March 31, 2010, 06:30:31 AM

Title: Meet The Handroid!
Post by: MG on March 31, 2010, 06:30:31 AM
(http://www.wired.com/reviews/embeddedImages/pr_fetish_knox_handroid_large_wide.jpg)

 Exoskeletal Glove Gives Motorcyclists an Iron Fist

You can't help it. It's a reflex. You stick out your hand when you fall — it's better to stop the descent with your palm than your face, right? That's fine when you're ambling down the street, but add an extra 80 mph and the weight of a motorcycle to the momentum equation and the bones in your paw might not take the strain very well. They could shift, buckle — even snap. What you need is an exoskeleton. If you know Tony Stark, you might be able to get something custom. For the rest of us, there's the Knox Handroid, a Kevlar-, kangaroo-hide-, and, yes, exoskeleton-reinforced motorcycle gauntlet. Thermoplastic urethane spines run down the outside of each finger and flex with your digits. To keep the armor in place, a ratchet system cinches 19 strands of stainless steel wire, spreading the pressure across your entire forearm. Then, when the pavement tries to persuade your bones to move beyond their comfort zone, the Handroid answers no. That's the reflex you're looking for
Title: Re: Meet The Handroid!
Post by: Ultra on March 31, 2010, 12:27:03 PM
Sweet.  How much though?
Title: Re: Meet The Handroid!
Post by: MG on March 31, 2010, 04:05:25 PM
$250 clams. Cheap, when you consider the cost of orthopedic surgery these days!    ;D
Title: Re: Meet The Handroid!
Post by: Ultra on March 31, 2010, 04:07:25 PM
Actually that isn't as bad as I feared.
Title: Re: Meet The Handroid!
Post by: MG on March 31, 2010, 06:19:30 PM
Having damn near severed a finger with my table saw last year, I can attest that there is a great deal of anxiety when one thinks one is about to say sayonara to a digit.

Of course, here in Vo Disland, bikers are not required to wear a helmet but passengers are. And so we are treated all day long to the vision of testosterone laden idiots riding 200 hp motorcycles while lane splitting and doing wheelies on the interstate with a helmet dangling from their left elbow in case they get lucky and pick up some equally stupid broad along the way.  ::)

Probably not much of a market for these things among that crowd.

Max Nealon is the only one I can think of who would actually use something like these but I can't tell him about them because he is on that "other" website where I am persona non grata and so I don't go there any more.  :(

Life goes on.

If you ride on a regular basis and are the least bit concerned about what happens to your body when and if you should fall off, these things make a great deal of sense.