A new scientific breakthrough could increase the odds that Hillary Clinton, 71, could enter the Democratic primary in an effort to unite the party behind a tried and tested (albeit twice-failed) candidate in 2020.
Clinton, whose unsuccessful 2016 campaign was plagued by challenges related to likability, balance, mobility, health scares, corruption, incompetence, and hubris, will be thrilled to learn that researchers at Keio University in Japan have developed a piece of technology that could mitigate at least one of those factors in the event she decides to run again.
The "Arque" is an "artificial biomimicry-inspired anthropomorphic tail" that elderly individuals can wear "as an extension of human body to provide active momentum alteration in balancing situations, or as a device to alter body momentum for full-body haptic feedback scenarios." In other words, it could be just the thing Hillary needs to overcome the general distaste with which she is viewed by a majority of the voting public.
The New York Post reports:
TOKYO — Millions of years after the ancestors of humans evolved to lose their tails, a research team at Japan’s Keio University have built a robotic one they say could help unsteady elderly people keep their balance.
Dubbed Arque, the grey one-meter device mimics tails such as those of cheetahs and other animals used to keep their balance while running and climbing, according to the Keio team.
"The tail keeps balance like a pendulum," said Junichi Nabeshima, a graduate student and researcher at the university’s Embodied Media Project, displaying the robotic tail attached to his waist with a harness.
"When a human tilts their body one way, the tail moves in the opposite direction."
Though difficult to conceal under a pantsuit, the Arque could provide Hillary with a less cumbersome solution to her balance issues compared to full-body exoskeleton alternatives. It is not currently known whether the tail's development is related to Keio University professor Tomohiko Taniguchi's 2018 visit to the Clinton School of Public Service in Arkansas.