In this thesis, I examine the production of a new way of walking by observing a South Korean team of robotics engineers, physical therapists, and paraplegics that has developed powered lower exoskeleton robots for the Cybathlon competition. Exoskeletons are wearable robots that facilitate limb movement. While engineering articles and promotional materials show a dream that the robots will make paraplegics free from wheelchairs and walk again, disability studies scholars criticize such a futuristic promise as a technological fix for disability. This thesis attempts to go beyond these disparate perspectives and explores the practices of humans and non-humans to produce walking. Observing the team from September 2019 to March 2020, I explored how distinctive modes of walking were configured, enacted, and sustained by programming, simulation, and training of codes, machines, and bodies. Based on the observation, I propose to call such walking “humatic walking,” as it is a combination of human walking and robotic walking.
Humatic walking emerged only after a long process of configuring exoskeletons and sustaining the human-robot combination. First, I introduce the four modes of walking to configure humatic walking: algorithmic walking, air walking, model walking, and collective walking. Humatic walking is the coalescence of the four modes of walking in which engineers, paraplegics, physical therapists, and robots have enacted walking alone or together. For the next, I show that the fine-tuning work to sustain the human-robot combination renders the integration of paraplegics and robots frictionless. By hand and footwork of physical therapists, engineers, and paraplegics, each paraplegic could have a unique way of walking, which they did not experience before having paralysis. I argue that humatic walking is not an imperfect simulation of “normal walking,” but a new way of walking made possible by the well-arranged human-robot interaction.
이 논문은 엑소스켈레톤 로봇을 개발하는 현장에서 걸음이 어떻게 만들어지는지를 분석한다. 이를 위해 2019년 9월부터 2020년 3월까지 공학자, 물리치료사, 하반신완전마비장애인으로 이루어진 엑소스켈레톤 개발 팀을 참여 관찰하였다. 공학 논문과 광고에서는 엑소스켈레톤이 하반신마비장애인을 휠체어에서 일으켜 다시 걸을 수 있게 만들 것이라 약속하는 반면, 장애학자들은 로봇이 장애를 ‘해결’할 수 없다고 비판해왔다. 이 논문에서는 엑소스켈레톤이 장애를 해결할 것인지 아닌지를 묻지 않는다. 대신 개발 현장으로 들어가 인간과 비인간이 걸음을 형성하기 위해 어떤 실천을 행하는지를 탐색한다. 프로그래밍, 시뮬레이션, 돌봄, 훈련, 유지보수작업을 관찰한 결과, 개발 팀은 엑소스켈레톤을 만들기 위해 인간의 걸음을 모사하여 로봇에 집어 넣거나, 로봇이 걷는 방식 그대로 장애인이 따라 걷기를 강요하지 않았다. 그보다는 인간-로봇 결합에 최적화된 특수한 방식의 걸음이 형성되었다. 이 논문은 이 걸음을“휴마틱 걸음”으로 부르자고 제안한다.
