Is it possible to make a hike uphill easier on your body? Skip thinks so, and they have a solution. In a collaboration with clothing company Arc’teryx, Skip, a startup born out of Google’s innovation lab, has a pair of specialized pants that act like a powered exoskeleton. They’re called Mo/Go.
With a motor at the knee, the Mo/Go (short for mountain goat) has an adjustable carbon-fiber cuffs keep them in place, and they augment the user’s quadricep and hamstring muscles to propel them forward and upward.
The idea is not to have a robot walk for you, but to help power your joints and muscles, letting you go farther, for longer.
Designed to assist a hiker or walker, the powered motors can take some of the load and stress off of your joints, making your body able to go further with less wear and tear.
The pants have been specialized to house Mo/Go’s components, which are noticeable, but try to be unobtrusive and easy to wear. Skip calls their device movewear. Designed with miniaturized components, Skip says their device’s power lasts for 3+ hours of continuous uphill walking on maximum assistance.
Even better, the device recharges automatically during downhill walking, using regeneration like an electric car does. A swappable batter allows for even more time.
A set of bracers hold your legs to the device, and allow the motors to take some of the load off of you, making ascending and descending noticeably lighter and easier. The collaboration with Arc/Teryx help keep the look and feel of the device more trail friendly.
In addition to helping able-bodied hikers, Mo/Go has the ability to help the elderly and those with mobility issues.
From Skip’s website:
‘Will MO/GO™ walk “for me”?
The short answer is “no”. MO/GO™ is designed to provide you with a 40% boost by supplementing the quadricep & hamstring muscles in your legs and offloading your knee joints. So it helps you with every step, but you’re still the one in control and doing the walking. Think of it like an electric bicycle – it makes pedalling a lot easier but you still have to turn the pedals yourself (it’s not a motorcycle). This is part of what makes MO/GO™ feel so natural – it understands and amplifies your walking.’
One of the very first publicly available exoskeleton devices, Skip plans to release these for sale this year for $4500, which is no small cost.
More intriguingly, Skip will be offering daily rentals of the device for $80, available in Arizona, Colorado and British Columbia, with more locations on the way.
