More than 50 years ago, General Electric engineer and robotics pioneer Ralph Mosher presented a ground-breaking technical paper at the 1967 Automotive Engineering Congress in Detroit, USA, outlining his vision for the use and development of exoskeletons.

“Man and machine can be combined into an intimate, symbiotic unit that will perform essentially as one wedded system,” he wrote. “The adaptive, reflex control of man can be transmitted directly to a mechanism so that the mechanism responds as though it were a natural extension of the man. ...Moreover, environments that are normally hostile to a human do not affect the machine.”

Back then, this was a lofty vision, but one that Mosher worked hard at realising. “Mosher was one of the earliest pioneers of exoskeletons, working alongside the US Armed Forces to bring machinery closer to the body,” explains Chris Hunter, vice president of collections and exhibitions at the Museum of Innovation and Science in...