Archelis (アルケリス ''arukerisu'', from ''arukeru isu'' 歩ける椅子, "walkable chair" in Japanese) is a wearable chair designed and manufactured by

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of To ...

-based mold factory, Nitto in association with Japan Polymer Technology,

Chiba University is a national university in the city of Chiba, Japan. It offers Doctoral degrees in education as part of a coalition with Tokyo Gakugei University, Saitama University, and Yokohama National University. The university was formed in 1949 from exist ...

's Center for Frontier Medical Engineering and Hiroaki Nishimura Design. The purpose of the chair is to aid industry workers and medical surgeons who had to work for long hours standing. As of February 2016, it is specially designed for medical surgeons, allowing them to sit during physically demanding surgical operations which reduces fatigue in surgeons.

History

Patents for similar wearable devices dates back to more than four decades which has since been expired. The original patent for the invention was first made by Darcy Robert Bonner in 1977 which was later granted as D249,987 in October 1978. In 2015, Swiss engineers came up with a similar product called Noonee which is a hydraulic-powered

exoskeleton An exoskeleton (from Greek ''éxō'' "outer" and ''skeletós'' "skeleton") is an external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to an internal skeleton (endoskeleton) in for example, a human. In usage, some of the ...

made of a

titanium Titanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in ...

frame. Noonee was tested on workers of German car manufacturing company,

Audi Audi AG () is a German automotive manufacturer of luxury vehicles headquartered in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany. As a subsidiary of its parent company, the Volkswagen Group, Audi produces vehicles in nine production facilities worldwide. Th ...

Function

The device while worn, makes the angle of ankle and

knee In humans and other primates, the knee joins the thigh with the leg and consists of two joints: one between the femur and tibia (tibiofemoral joint), and one between the femur and patella (patellofemoral joint). It is the largest joint in the hu ...

stable to enable a standing orientation such that the knees moderately bent but without applying any effort on the legs and without exerting pressure on the joints. The body coercion gets shared out to the

shin Shin may refer to: Biology * The front part of the human leg below the knee * Shinbone, the tibia, the larger of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates Names * Shin (given name) (Katakana: シン, Hiragana: しん), a Japanese ...

and

thigh In human anatomy, the thigh is the area between the hip (pelvis) and the knee. Anatomically, it is part of the lower limb. The single bone in the thigh is called the femur. This bone is very thick and strong (due to the high proportion of bone ...

, minimizing the muscle fatigue. The device can be locked into unassociated positions for each limb to permit the user to stand in a comfortable way. The designers believe that the device is perfect for medical surgeons who need to stand for long hours during operations.

Structure

The system involves no cell or power, made of carbon segments and materialized with hook and loop closures. It was noted by the company that the device is comfortable to use for long hours as the carbon parts are flexible.

Public

The wearable chair is under active development as of February 2016 and is currently not available for the public to purchase. In seasons 5 and 6 of ''Silicon Valley'', recurring character Gabe is always showing wearing an Archelis.

References

{{Reflist Chairs Individual models of furniture