Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation

xlogan writes, "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative research proposals on Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation (EHPA). The agency has put their proposal online. " The sheer number of mundane tasks I could accomplish with an exoskeleton is amazing. Why, I could rearrange furniture in the blink of an eye, all while defending the Earth from Evil! And with my super-enhanced vision and hearing, I might finally be allowed to join The Justice League of America ^[?] .

Comments

This isn't like the book!

[William Tanksley]

Hey, this isn't right. "Starship Troopers" wasn't just about the fancy weaponry -- they should first establish a proposal investigating the social effects of limiting the franchise to veterans, or lashing as a replacement for imprisonment for certain offences.

Seriously, though, it IS funny to see that every single thing in that list came from Starship Troopers, and I don't think any suit-based thing mentioned in Starship Troopers was excluded. I really have to suspect that the whole idea for this particular suggestion originated from one person reading Starship Troopers for the first time. ;-)

COOL.

-Billy

Um... Of course, I wonder what this will do to our warfare? It could make it worse... Or better. I'll have to ponder that. Of course, it wouldn't affect guerrila warfare.

Mobile infantry, anyone???

[Pig Hogger]

Geee, that sounds like the Mobile Infantry suits in Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie)...

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Re:Mobile infantry, anyone???

[Hellburner]

To the everlasting glory of the infantry
shines the name
shines the name
of Rodger Young!

I swear to god I served under Sgt. Jelal's alter-ego in Okinawa. Little mustang-gunny lieutenant---apparently raised on the Sauron homeworld.

I sure as hell would have liked the powered armor at ANY time. My little stub legs sucked when I was humping machine guns.

I participated in a US / Westerners evac from a beach in Freetown, Sierra Leone, summer of '97. We took that beach without so much as harsh language: LAVs and aamtraks from the water (don't remember if there were LCACs), helos dropped the rifle and weapon companies, Cobras circling menacingly in the distance. I remember seeing fully armed Harriers just before we left the flight deck.

That day I distinctly remember thinking about the first battle scene in Starship Troopers. Mismatch.
Latter in the day, a truck full of teenagers in ragged Hawaiian shirts carrying rifles and RPGs rolled up near our perimeter. They saw what they faced and quickly retreated. They still nearly got annihilated by pointing their weapons in our general direction.

Here's my longwinded point: I don't care how much we have to spend, I want every American serviceman to have that advantage. The adversary should be totally cowed by the technological advantage. And when facing a more formidable adversary, I want that advantage to translate into the elimination of opposing force as quickly as possible.

American democracy is the worst form of government.

Except for all the others.

(Blatantly stolen from Churchill.)

Re:Power armor

[BJH]

Yeah, the bear suit is cool. I hadn't looked at the page for a while - it seems he's been doing some more testing...

Testing On Suit:

1.Truck: 18 collisions with a three-tonne truck travelling at 50 kilometres an hour (30 m.p.h)
2.Rifle: Shot at with 12 gauge shotgun, using "Sabot" slugs
3.Arrows: Armour-piercing arrows, fired from 45 kilogram (100 lb.) bow
4.Tree Trunk: Two collisions with a 136 kilgram (300 lb.) tree from a height of 9 metres (30 ft.)
5.Bikers: Assault by three bikers -- the largest, 2.05 metres (6 ft. 9 in.) tall, weighing 175 kilograms (385 lbs.). Biker armaments: splitting ax, planks, baseball bat.
6.Escarpment: Jumped off escarpment, falling over 15.25 metres (over 150 ft.).

One has to wonder if the biker testing was planned or simply the spontaneous result of wearing the bear suit to the local biker bar.

Open Source It!

[BrianH]

No, this isn't another GPL zealot screaming "Open-Source Everything!", I've actually got an interesting idea. Why not try an open source style community development project for something like this? I mean, how many hardware hackers here could figure out the electronics needed for this thing? How many programmers here could write the OS and a component style architecture to run it? How many engineers here could come up with efficient actuator designs or durable frames? If a system like this were developed and the military passed it over, then participants could count it as a hell of a learning experience. If the military actually accepted the design and paid out the US$50mil, then the funds could simply be divvied up among the various contributors or even donated to pre-agreed upon charities.

I don't have time to manage a project like this myself, but I would definitely contribute to such a project if somebody were willing to put it together (I've got a complete body cooling/heating system that I designed for a friend who races stock cars. It runs 6 hours on 4 D cell batteries and can maintain a skin temperature of 45F to 80F in a -20F to 130F environment).

Stephan Hawking Builds Robotic Exoskeleton

[SatanLilHlpr]

http://www.theonion.com/onion3123/hawkingexo.html

Reality and some info on current research

[boarder]

I posted this earlier in reply to a comment but I haven't seen anyone make any good informative posts about the reality of this research. Sorry if this is a little redundant of my other post.

One of my professors is working on these projects right now and has been for awhile. The US military has had stuff in the past, just not what you may consider "exoskeleton." They loosely considered Rocketpacks and things like in Alien(s? when Ripley put on the big loader robot suit thing and kicked the mother's ass) as exoskeletons.

He is working on the propulsion parts right now. One of the problems they have with "skins" that make you stronger is that they can crush you. That would suck.

The leaping great heights is done using jet/rocket devices. As for the power problem, I think rotational inertia storage a la Rolex's Oyster Perpetual motion stuff would help if you have the suit "turned off." That could charge the batteries during unpowered walking or during rocket assisted leaping.

I am going to talk with him about working on these projects and maybe submitting a proposal myself.

shh, be real quiet.

[waterhouse]

can you here it, its just very faint.
its the sound of thousands of anime fans quietly chuckling with joy.

Maybe this time...

[Animats]

GE built a powered exoskeleton, the Hardiman, in the 1960s. The mechanics were good, but the controls were clunky.

The most useful idea in this direction to date was from Kraft Telerobotics, which once built a backhoe with force-feedback controls. You put your hand in the gripper and made digging motions, with the backhoe following along. The force feedback was good; they claimed the operator could dig around a pipe by feel. Great for muddy trenches. Didn't sell; Kraft was geared to selling to researchers, not building contractors.

So it ought to be possible. Useful? I doubt it. Too many actuators and joints for a fieldable machine.

Every adolescent geeks dream...

[Stoutlimb]

..is to build a big robot exoskeleton you can use to crush your enemies... Now this is news for nerds!!

But seriously, robots like this have been science fiction for decades, it's interesting to see respectable institutions taking this seriously. I imagine successful implementation of this technology would again change the face of warfare. With anti-aircraft missles easily mountable on each soilder, perhaps air power will not always be king?

Something to think about... This could be the biggest paradigm shift until they discover a good repulsorlift and make hovertanks.

--

Do you think Hemmingway would have written so many novels if his typewriter had been capable of Open GL hardware-accelerated 3-D graphics?

Exoskeleton or Virtual Body?

[Taco Cowboy]

Exoskeleton means something hard (skeleton) outside with softbody inside - which means, for every exo to work, a human must be inside operate it.

If the purpose of the exo is to do heavy-lifting and/or other tough/dangerous stuffs, putting a human inside still mean if accident happens, someone will get hurt, or may even die.

My own proposal -

Why not make a remote-virtual body instead?

Instead of putting a LIFE human being at the place of work, why not use the virtual reality technology into work, and operate the exo-droid virtually - via remote control.

That way, the exo-droid can do all types of things, including stepping on landmines, without having the operator risking injuries.

What do you think?

Exoskeletons - but what about the software ?

[Lowther]

I am more worried about the software, particularly if it is of the 64kBug variety. It could cause some real social problems:

The whole exoskeleton population has a nervous twitch at the turn of each century or on a leap year

Cult of the Dead Cow develop a tool exploiting vulnerabilities in the exoskeleton security, forcing it to perform Monty Python Silly Walks and the Can-Can every Tuesday at 3pm.

The 'Eiffel 65 effect' - the suit locks up solid and the whole world turns blue

Each service pack applied to the suit alters its behaviour subtly. This damages user confidence and they require counselling

Shock troopers from the DoJ keep attacking you with chain-saws, to remove functionality which they feel shouldn't have really been bundled into the suit in the first place

Personally - I'll stick to waring the hides of dead animals - much safer and warmer.