Yoga pants are only a metaphor. What I mean is: when it is worn, it does not call attention to itself.
Last year I saw a promotional video for the Hypershell exoskeleton on social media. I was a little excited, but it also felt a bit… bulky.
Later I followed its market response. There was good and bad.
The good feedback was mostly that it really lets outdoor people push their limits and complete outdoor experiences more easily.
The bad feedback was about price, battery life, heat, weight, portability, how unfriendly it is when you sit down to rest… and its shape. It does not feel everyday or natural. Even if it is limited to outdoor settings, it draws attention.
At the same time, many people asked whether it could be used by people with injured or declining physical ability. The answer was no, because Hypershell is designed to enhance people who already have ability, not to enable people to maintain or recover physical ability.
Even its first promotional video pointed directly at outdoor use. It entered through a niche market.
Around the Lunar New Year, the term “soft exoskeleton” came into my view. Once I connected it with Hypershell, I finally understood what an exoskeleton I really like would look like.
01 Do outdoor people really need enhanced ability?
Last year I climbed Hallasan. From the foot of the mountain back to the foot again, it took about thirteen hours—from before daylight to after dark.
The strongest feelings I had were: my hands were cold even with gloves on; climbing up was so, so tiring; the summit was cold and windy; on the way down, the first two thirds were so happy (I even ran, and my companions slid down the snowy slope). In the final third, the soles of my feet and my toes slowly began to hurt with a burning pain. Every step I thought: why is there no cable car to pick me up…
Later, several toenails turned purple-black, fell off slowly, and grew back. It took more than three months.
For me, if I needed enhanced ability during that experience, it was only while going uphill.
The pain in my soles and toes had several reasons. First, perhaps my shoes were not comfortable enough, though strangely I had almost no discomfort going up or in the first two thirds of the descent. Second, my downhill posture and the way my legs and feet landed and pushed were wrong. This is important: going down, I kept rubbing the front of my feet and toes. Third, I am not really an outdoor enthusiast in the strict sense. Outdoor activity is only an occasional experience for me. Staying on the road for nearly thirteen hours was already the limit of my feet. In other words, if my feet could hold on, I could keep walking.
And I found that my companions finished the whole journey easily. Even among the people passing us were people who had been there more than once or twice. Some could finish in six, seven, or eight hours.
I wondered: what do people go outdoors for?
To complete a challenge and get a medal of honour, or for the experience itself and certain feelings?
How many people belong to each group?
I remembered my first stream crossing versus my first backpacking hike. For the first, I did not know I could wear knee pads. Even though the route was very light, my legs hurt for almost a week afterward. For the second, I wore knee pads, spent a night on the mountain, and on the way home I only felt tired and sleepy. Almost no other discomfort. Really amazing, right?
Seen this way, perhaps we do not need ability enhancement itself. We need to prevent the body from being injured outdoors. Right now, we can lower these risks with shoes, ankle braces, knee pads, elbow pads, trekking poles, crampons…
So back to “do outdoor people really need enhanced ability?” Given my experience so far, I do not need it in the short term. But in the future… I am not so sure.
I also wonder whether, for people who truly make the outdoors a way of life, an exoskeleton with a form like Hypershell will become an essential adjustment in daily life. 🤔
02 Soft/flexible exoskeletons
What does an exoskeleton without that bulky feeling look like?
It should be like clothing. When you wear it, it should not take other people's attention away from you.
That is the soft exoskeleton I mentioned above. In the founder's words, it is like Batman's suit, or leggings and yoga pants. Its goal is to prevent knee injuries. It might be used for skiing, basketball, American football, or other sports with potential knee risk. Of course, the team started with knees. Other possibilities may appear later.
In that sense, this kind of product is about protecting the body.
I remember once going hiking with a friend when I had little experience. I wore trainers that gave my ankles no protection, so I sprained one. It was not serious, but it still hurt. Later I changed to proper hiking boots and clearly felt that, in the instant I was about to sprain my ankle, the shoes saved me.
I have played football, but because of my ability level I have not had very intense contact. Things like ligament or meniscus tears were only things I heard about.
But I am curious: can technology really prevent situations like that? What is its prediction or reaction speed actually like?
Questions are questions, but things that break human imagination always happen. Google DeepMind's AlphaFold, for example, solved a prediction problem that had lasted for decades. Given time, there may be bigger breakthroughs in enabling, enhancing, or protecting human physical ability too.
Suddenly I thought: why is it called an “exoskeleton”?
Is it not because it only assists, rather than replaces?
It is like the outdoor equipment we buy now, or learning how to use our bodies correctly. An exoskeleton helps us prevent risks, share loads, and reduce wrong force. It steps in before the body has a problem. So back to the “experience certain feelings” I mentioned above: an exoskeleton can only assist. It cannot replace the body in feeling.
The problem is that the technical validation may be mature, but it has not entered the market at scale. For now I can only see interviews online, and not many of them, especially in China.
03 The real mass market for exoskeletons
Back to the observations I mentioned earlier: most people care more about whether exoskeletons can enable people with limited physical ability, such as older people or people with injuries. The demand there is not small at all.
Medical rehabilitation exoskeletons are already very mature commercially, but only inside medical settings, with limits on use. Industrial exoskeletons in warehouses, car factories, or carrying work have also achieved some results according to market feedback. There are military exoskeletons too. Ukraine, for example, started testing lightweight exoskeletons in March. Consumer exoskeletons caught my attention last year, but there is still no breakout product.
The need is not only among people who need exoskeletons for enabling, enhancement, or protection. Today, with population ageing and lower willingness to have children, declining labour is an imaginable future. Even if robots may replace human labour by then, human physical ability still needs to be maintained. We still need to move, walk, and jog slowly. We will still need external protective equipment. The demand for exoskeletons may become larger than ever.
The soft-exoskeleton product I found can actively collect user data and analyse or use it with AI. It is a little like an Apple Watch for the knee. Usually, this data can only be collected through hospitals, doctors, and medical equipment. Now the exoskeleton becomes a data hub. I mentioned many outdoor devices above, but they are not intelligent and cannot predict. They are passive protection. An exoskeleton can actively sense, predict risk, intervene, and save the data. It feels like digitising body data and managing the body in a scientific way. This may be an inevitable trend in our era, and we are already inside it.
So when will consumer exoskeleton products really take off? I am looking forward to it. (The price, the price, the price has to stay under control! :)