Know that sensation you have while running downhill, where you're not fully in control but feel like you could run forever? WIRED writer Amit Katwala tests a wearable AI-powered robotic exoskeleton that enhances running performance by correcting technique—and forcing faster movement. With Olympic sprinter Adam Gemili's coaching and assistance, Amit improves his posture, increases knee lift, and shaves half a second off his 100m time. Could wearable tech push human performance beyond natural limits?
To learn more about Adam Gemili, check out his website https://adamgemilifit.com/ and on Instagram @adamgemili
Director: Anna O'Donohue; Hamin Kim
Director of Photography: Gyeonghyeon Hwang
Editor: Matthew Colby; Anna O'Donohue
Host: Amit Katwala
Expert: Jooeun Ahn; Giuk Lee; Kyungsoo Oh
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Camera Operator: Dajeong Jeong
Assistant Camera: Sanghyun Yu
Sound Mixer: Lee Keunho
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Rachel Kim
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
To learn more about Adam Gemili, check out his website https://adamgemilifit.com/ and on Instagram @adamgemili
Director: Anna O'Donohue; Hamin Kim
Director of Photography: Gyeonghyeon Hwang
Editor: Matthew Colby; Anna O'Donohue
Host: Amit Katwala
Expert: Jooeun Ahn; Giuk Lee; Kyungsoo Oh
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Camera Operator: Dajeong Jeong
Assistant Camera: Sanghyun Yu
Sound Mixer: Lee Keunho
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Rachel Kim
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Category
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TechTranscript
00:00Here's me running normally, and here's me running with a robotic exosuit.
00:04If you look closely you can see how it's making my knees lift higher and my posture more upright.
00:08So what is this thing?
00:10Well, you know that feeling of running downhill,
00:12where you're not fully in control of your own speed but you feel like you could run forever?
00:15That's the idea behind this wearable robot.
00:17It basically forces you to move your legs faster by learning from your natural movements and correcting them.
00:23Some questions.
00:24How does it work?
00:25Why does it exist?
00:26How much faster can I get?
00:28Is it easy to use?
00:29And will wearing this make me superhuman?
00:37I'm not much of an athlete.
00:40You'll usually find me here, here or here.
00:44I'm Amit Katwala.
00:45I'm a writer and editor for Wired and I've always been fascinated by technology and how it can enhance human performance.
00:50I even wrote a book about the overlap between neuroscience and sport.
00:54When I heard about an exosuit that can make people run faster, I knew I needed to try it.
00:58But first I needed to get a baseline of my own unassisted performance.
01:02I asked Adam Gemilli, an Olympic sprint coach and Team GB Olympian to give me some brutal feedback on my current technique.
01:07Let's have a look.
01:09Yeah, so obviously, first of all, your hip flexors are very tight.
01:13You can see that you can barely get your knee.
01:15There's no knee lift there.
01:16The improvements for me, I'd say bringing your thighs up a little bit higher.
01:20You need to start pumping your arms.
01:21You're losing a lot of power there.
01:22Your arms should be sort of at 90 degrees and you should be able to swing them back to really generate that power and get off the track a lot quicker and stay in the air a lot longer and move a lot faster.
01:32So I think I think with the arms, I think what I was doing was just trying to mimic what I've seen.
01:37You know what I mean?
01:38With no real sort of like, oh, sprinters, when they sprint, they run, they move their arms like this.
01:42So that's what I was doing.
01:42It needs to be at that 90.
01:44It needs to be at that 90 degrees.
01:45It needs to come up to eye level.
01:46And also when you when you go backwards, look at that sort of stopping at the side of your body.
01:49You can see it's not really coming up.
01:51The hand is sort of like level with the hip and it should be it should be past the hip at 90 degrees.
01:55And that will influence what your lower legs do as well.
01:58But not a bad run at all, to be honest with you, not a bad baseline and pretty naturally athletic,
02:02even if maybe you've not sprinted before.
02:04It's a really nice running technique and a really nice running style.
02:07So no, good job.
02:08Not too bad at all.
02:09Not too bad.
02:10Thanks.
02:10I don't think anyone's ever called me naturally athletic before, so I don't feel like that.
02:14I showed Adam footage of the seat in action.
02:16It's quite an interesting idea, this thing.
02:18It's almost like overspeed training and it's pushing your body to a place that it might not necessarily naturally get to.
02:23But once your body's been somewhere, we'll find a way to get there again.
02:27I'd expect with this exosuit for you to take at least a second off that 100 meters.
02:31Now a second might not seem like a lot, but at an elite level where tenths of seconds matter,
02:35a one second increase is incredibly significant.
02:44Before I could test the suit on the track, I needed to try the robot in the Herotix lab in Seoul, South Korea.
02:49There we can get a baseline for my performance and the robot can learn from my technique.
02:53So here I am at the lab where I'm going to learn about how the suit works.
02:57So they're attaching motion capture dots to me that the cameras around the room are going to pick up
03:02so that they can analyse my running style.
03:04I feel like I'm in a video game.
03:06It's quite cool.
03:07This is the same technology they use for motion capture on sports games and things like that.
03:10On the computer over there, they're going to be able to use these dots and these cameras to map my gate
03:15both with and without the suit and compare how my running style changes when I'm running in the suit
03:19and when I'm running without the suit.
03:21So we are just going to start motion capturing your analysis running posture.
03:31Yep, so I need to pump my arms.
03:33Remember to pump my arms.
03:34This is pretty quick by my standards.
03:40Okay.
03:40Now that we have my natural running gate captured, it's time to get into the suit.
03:48Also, I feel quite sort of trussed up, like packaged in.
03:52So it's quite tight around my thighs and like around here.
03:54You know when you tighten the straps on a backpack and it kind of goes like up like that,
03:58that's what it feels like.
03:59You know, just like I'm kind of wearing an item of clothing really.
04:02The crucial part of this robot, one is this model and two is the AI model inside of here.
04:09This is the brain of the human.
04:11This is the muscle of the human.
04:14This brain analyses the real running posture by measuring your running data.
04:20This is the cable which pulls your leg higher.
04:25And it also has a sensor measuring your pulling force in the real time.
04:30This motion sensor measuring your running posture and what it's the running balance, everything.
04:37Okay, I'm suited up and ready to try this again.
04:41So, I don't know if you can hear that, but that's quite loud.
04:44It sounds like there's a hairdryer.
04:45I feel like a piece of meat wrapped in string.
04:49Okay.
04:51Okay, so I can feel the suit kind of puffing away.
04:53I don't think it's quite synced up to me yet, but...
04:55Okay, here we go.
04:56So now it's syncing up with me.
04:57It feels like it's kind of pushing my leg forward a bit more as I'm running.
05:02And you can see my knees going up more than they would have done normally.
05:06It's adapting dynamically to what I'm doing.
05:09But I feel quite stable actually after that.
05:13I was worried I was going to be sort of out of control.
05:16And I'm still a little bit out of breath, but it felt a bit like running downhill.
05:21Well, you're not quite fully in control of your own speed, but you've got a bit of assistance.
05:25So you kind of feel your legs almost moving faster than the rest of your body.
05:28That's what it felt like a little bit.
05:29We're about to go up to five meters per second.
05:31So 20% faster.
05:37Okay, here we go.
05:40Okay, the treadmill's kicked in and the suit is kicking in as well.
05:43And there it goes.
05:44That's the suit really clicking with the gear.
05:46It just got even faster and tighter.
05:48And now it's really helping me out.
05:49It's like synced up with my running style.
05:51I'm going to try and pump my arm a bit more to keep up with this.
05:58Yeah, it feels pretty good actually.
06:04But it's still not that easy.
06:08I feel all right actually.
06:10I don't feel nearly as out of breath as I did the last time I did it without the suit.
06:14But let's look at the data and see how we get on.
06:16Is that my skeleton?
06:17Yeah, it's your skeleton.
06:18Okay.
06:19Yeah.
06:20What values are you able to see with the software?
06:22Reflection angle, angle velocity, hip joint power, hip joint moment,
06:27and ground region first.
06:28So first I will show you the hip flexion angles.
06:31The red solid line is without the suit and blue solid line is with the suit.
06:36Wow, so you can really see a big improvement there.
06:37Wow, that's amazing.
06:38So that's almost a 10 degree improvement.
06:40Yeah, it's right.
06:41Is that quite big?
06:42Yeah, it's really big.
06:43So this is without the suit.
06:44So you can see my knees are getting up okay, but...
06:47Your pelvic just lean.
06:48Oh yeah, so my pelvis is leaning forward like that.
06:50You can see it on the skeleton.
06:51So then switch to the with the suit.
06:53Yeah, sure.
06:54Oh yeah, and you can see it's much straighter, isn't it?
06:57Yeah, that's right.
06:58After you're wearing the suit, your body just gets straight.
07:01Yeah.
07:01So then when I put my foot down, it's going more down straight down into the ground
07:05rather than kind of going backwards like that.
07:07With the exosuit on, my posture improved.
07:09When I put my feet down while wearing the suit, they went straight into the ground,
07:13so my next stride had more power.
07:14Wearing the exosuit improved my gait cycle time by almost 40%.
07:18So I'm taking fewer steps for longer.
07:20That's right.
07:20That's a massive difference.
07:22Now, armed with the H-Fit exosuit and my expert guidance from Adam,
07:26I went out to the Seoul National University track to try it out.
07:30So I'm about to run 100 metres on the athletics track without the suit.
07:33Jin Young's going to be timing me using this timing pad
07:36and then these split timers all the way down to the end of the track
07:39and they're going to use that to help analyse my performance.
07:41So I've just finished my 100 metres without the suit and now I'm here with Kyung Soo,
08:09who's a Korean national sprinter and Joon, who's a professor of sports engineering
08:12and part of the team that built the suit.
08:15So Kyung Soo, what did you make of my running technique?
08:18It's cold and it's cold.
08:21It's quite freezing today.
08:22You should flex your hips further,
08:27but it looks like you're more dependent on your ankles instead of here.
08:33And what about my arms?
08:34What is it with my arms?
08:35Okay.
08:35I'm going to swing like this when you're in a position like this.
08:39Okay.
08:39My hand has a lot of strength.
08:40So it looks like you've depended too much on your hands
08:44and your hands look like very stiff.
08:47So I mean, he recommended to just relax your hands further.
08:52Yeah.
08:52So I'm doing this and I should be doing this.
08:59Yeah.
09:00Okay.
09:00Can this suit shave a second or more off 100 meter time?
09:11We're about to find out.
09:12And can it do it when it's minus 10 and blizzarding?
09:17You can see the snow.
09:18It's very beautiful.
09:19It's like a Christmas card,
09:21but I have to run as fast as I can in this weather.
09:23So we'll see how that goes.
09:24Let's go.
09:33Let's go.
09:35Let's go.
09:37Let's go.
09:39Let's go.
09:45That felt really good.
09:56That felt a lot quicker.
09:57Yeah.
09:58I feel like I really hopefully shave some time off.
10:01Yeah, it definitely helped me out, especially in the middle section.
10:03I could really feel it like pumping with me.
10:05It got a bit out of sync at times, but overall, I think it really, really helped.
10:09What did you guys think?
10:12Did it look good?
10:12You got 15.7.
10:1515.7, so I shaved half a second off my time.
10:18Yeah, yeah.
10:19That's amazing.
10:20That's so good.
10:21Again, half a second might not seem like a lot,
10:23until you remember that it was half a second faster than my previous best,
10:26despite the sub-zero weather and having spent all day running on the treadmill.
10:29I'm also wearing additional layers,
10:31so even matching my speed would have been an achievement.
10:33But with the suit on, I beat it.
10:37As Adam said, maybe I'm more of a natural athlete than I thought.
10:42Or maybe it's just the suit.