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Starship Troopers: Exoskeletons and Translators
naoursla writes: "Remember the DARPA research solicitation for proposals on Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation? Here is a group that is making progress on it. Right now they have a pair of legs powered by a chain saw engine. Science News has an
article about the researchers this week." And cmholm writes: "Fleshing out this earlier Slashdot story on wearable translators for the military is an article from AFCEA's June Signal magazine. Using a ViA II PC wearable running ViA's Language Translator software, the system can translate between spoken English and Korean, Thai, Chinese, Arabic, Albanian, Spanish, and other major European languages." So between the two, you can either talk to the aliens, or throw them out the airlock.
Mechanical legs powered by a chain-saw engine?
The real purpose of Junkyard Wars/Scrapheap Challenge becomes clear....next generation military hardware from a big pile of crap!
"Allright ladies, you wanna-be Marines have to build me a device that will protect your sorry asses using only things you find in the junkyard..."
Since it's a US project, I'd bet they are working on translations for missions that the US Military sees coming in the next few decades. Korea, China, Middle East.
As for African languages, if I remeber correctly, *most* African nations will also have large percentages of thier populations that speak French, English or in some cases Portuguese - from the european colonies. North African nations will have Arabic as thier main language.
A quick look at the CIA World Fact Book backs this up. - Random clicks of African nations.
Angola - Portuguese (official), Bantu and other African languages
Benin - French (official), Fon and Yoruba (most common vernaculars in south), tribal languages (at least six major ones in north)
Ethiopia - Amharic, Tigrinya, Orominga, Guaraginga, Somali, Arabic, other local languages, English
Libya - Arabic, Italian, English
Rwanda - Kinyarwanda (official) universal Bantu vernacular, French (official), English (official), Kiswahili (Swahili)
There's a random sample of African nations from CIA World Fact Book. I got central Africa, western coast, North Africa and East Africa...so it's a pretty good regional sample.
They have been in the past.
Angola was the center of a nasty civil war that not only involved South Africa, but an entire Cuban Army Regiment for years. US and Soviet "Advisors" were also there for the festivities.
Parts of Timor, the island in Indonesia where the UN went into last year, speak Portuguese.
The South China Sea and Africa will continue to be hot spots of international importance....and they speak Portuguese there.
Tanks are powered by gas turbines or large diesel motors...not much stealth there.
Stealth has it's place when you are scouting or under armored. When you are assaulting stealth takes a back seat.
I'd suspect that exoskeletons powered with chainsaw motors aren't going to be used for stealthy recon.
That said, when these things (if ever) go into service, there will be a fuel cell or quiet ceramic motor to power them.
...but this guy sure ain't no Ripley.
Does that mean that script kiddies will be trying to hack into them over the internet?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I read a lot of Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein all around the same time so I'm sure I'm remembering wrong, but it does seem as though 30 or 40 years of common use of "Waldo" or "Waldoes" to refer to these things would amount to the copyright or trademark equivalent of "prior art".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Sarge: "What in God's name are you men DOING!?!?"
...And so on.
Platoon: "We're yanking on our pull cords, SIR!"
Sarge: "I see that. Stop that sick shit, or you'll be scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush!!"
Platoon: "We're just trying to start our pants, SIR!"
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Let alone a heavily armed Marine in an exoskeleton...
You mean like this?
http://www.theonion.com/onion3123/hawkingexo.html
-Chris
Check out the three and four "legged" robot section:
Biomemetic Walking Machines
The three legged robot uses simple solenoids to achieve directional and rotational control (talk about a cheap actuator), while the four legged "bug" uses a simple mechanical system and open loop design (ie, you could build one of these devices from Lego with zero sensors, and it would work) - makes me want to break out the Mindstorms set...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
And if not, how can the software/hardware be modified to make it applicable to amputees and/or paralyzed people?
The pair of legs powered by a chainsaw engine is more of a walking wheelbarrow than an exoskeleton. More pics here.
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Right now they have a pair of legs powered by a chain saw engine.
Is that it? They should have spoken to Stephen Hawking first, his exoskeleton is fully functional.
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Moderator's essentials
I'm too busy to read....
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Moderator's essentials
That's two words.
Yup, as Heatseeker151 pointed out, I can't spell properly. I've checked it though - substitute the word "civillian" in the result for "common people". Apologies for my mistake.
and other _major_ European languages. WTF? Albanian is spoken by like a million people. It's one of, if not, the poorest country in Europe. Sorry but that doesn't count as major. IMNSHO the major ones are English, German, French, and Spanish in no particular order. Also, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Thai does not count as European languages.
I can't possibly imagine that direct translation would be a better solution. What is audio for a computer? It is a sequence of samples, there are no easily visible patterns inside it. The audio signal needs to be simplified into a sequence of phonemes, which can then be analyzed by the translation/parsing unit. And text happens to be a relatively reasonable representation of phonemes (phonetic writing is also a kind of text, you know). Of course, using actual idiosyncratic, but "correct" spelling is incredibly stupid, but some kind of text makes very much sense to me.
The Science News article credits Heinlein with exoskeletons, in Starship Troopers. I was surprised they didn't mention Waldos, essentially a networked version of the same thing, which he is better known for.
ourpla.net is your planet
Am I the only one who thought of Junkyard Wars after reading about a contraption powered by a chainsaw engine? This sounds like a good challenge for the next season...
Well, Korean is considered one of the Turk languages (Altaic?), and Turkey is *sort* of considered part of Europe. Thai is also considered to have been under Indian influence, and considering the number of Indian people involved in technology around the world, I'm surprised that at least Hindi isn't on the list. Also, I see no African languages in that list, where people are most likely to need translation for peace keeping missions.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
The Techno-Trousers were 'Ex-NASA' - so there's prior art but it doesn't belong to Wallace.
The porridge cannon on the other hand...
Only in a humane *society*.
In many societies throughout history, the chosen response to a wounded soldier would be the exoskeleton telling other soldiers "this unit is wounded, leave it!" or perhaps giving the wearer a lethal injection as soon as he becomes incapacitated. Not solely for mercy, probably just to keep him from being captured.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Why does Michael seem to think a clunky translator built by humans could ever understand an alien?!
* we don't have ANY alien vocabulary to build on
* Unlike with humans, we can't base understanding on some basic thing that aliens are certain to understand the same way we do. SETI are off their rockers. It's true that their mathematical symbols are the best chance, but when they were showed to a roomful of scientists with specialties in that area, not one of the poor bastards could read it.
* Finally, alien languages will not only have different sounds (if they're even verbal - consider aliens that communicate by scent, telepathically, or by gesture), but they are also likely to have a completely different grammar, with verb tenses and complexities completely new to us.
To sum up, no earthling translator built now has a hope in hell of figuring out what an alien is saying. I think Michael was just being weirdo. However, it might be possible, AFTER we meet some aliens, to design a translator. If, that is, our initial inability to communicate does not put us immediately at war.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
How Exoskeletons Will Work
I note that this translator technology is being tested for military use, and that the exoskeleton research is being funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). While I'm sure that all of these technologies will have civilian applications, I can't help but wonder how much better off we would be if we took the money we use for researching military technology and devoted it to peaceful purposes. Maybe I'm a little bit of an idealist, but it saddens to me to think of how many of the best and brightest minds in science and engineering are devoted to studying better ways for us to kill one another. There must be a more fruitful way to make use of all that knowledge, dedication, and intellectual prowess.
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"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" -- T. Jefferson
Technology that allows troops on either side of battle to understand the cool/witty one liners of the enemy.
Sarge: "Oh my God they just killed Dave!!!"
Private: "But ya gotta admit... what that guy just said... It was pretty fucking funny!"
Sarge: "Yeah Chuckie, I suppose it was!"
Sarge and Private: *high five*
:)
Your good civillian; I mean you do not have the harm.
What happen?
Some one set us up the bomb!
Finally there will be no jar that man cannot open
Just imagine what would happen if the pants suddenly "detect" that the muscleman test pilot really wants to perform movements suitable for a ballet dancer.
After a few pretty splits and bends, which all 15-year old ballerinas would envy, the pieces of the soldier's bones are collected from the suit with tweezers.
Dr. Farnsworth: This is a universal translator. Unfortunately, it translates into an obscure dead language. HELLO!
Translator: Bonjour!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Source:
Hello civillian; I mean you no harm. Please could you direct me and my men to the nearest source of fresh water. Please don't be alarmed by our huge pointy knives and lethal semi-automatic weapons.
Result:
Your good civillian; I mean you do not have the harm. Please can your directly I and my person to the fresh water most neighbor origin. Please do not report to the police by ours huge pointy knife and the lethal semi automatic weapon.
N.B. there doesn't seem to be a Chinese word for civillian or pointy.
Heh, so I guess maybe they're going to have fun working the kinks out.
Well, you have to expect that switching between a non-PIE language will cause some significant problems - there are different basic linguistic concepts between English and, say, Japanese. For example, picture the concept "with". Well, in almost all PIE languages, there is just one word. But, that word actually covers two concepts - "with" as in accompaniment, and "with" as in "by use of". In Japanese, it is two words - to and de, if I remember right. In Japanese, there are only two tenses - past, and present/future. However, they have 3 measures of distance instead of our "near/far" formed words (and they're much more regularly formed... we have "near", "here", "this", etc, vs "far", "there", "that" - no order whatsoever). In Japanese, the prefix "ko-" means "near, as in the speaker's location", "so-" means "far, as in the listener's location", and "a-", means "far, as in further than that" (there's also "do-" which makes it a question. There are just different linguistic balance issues that you really have to just take in context, and that even with a human translating, probably won't last a few back-and-forth cycles.
Oh, and just as a side note, about how few exceptions there are in Japanese compared to english... cross those prefixes with the suffixes "-ko" (location), "-re" (pronouns), "-no" (adjectives), "-chira" (direction), "-nna" (manner, kind), and vowel lengthening, there's only one exception in the 24 combinations - "asoko" instead of "ako".
-= rei =-
"This may be presumptuous..." "That's my favorite kind of 'This'."
Having used a voicemail service which relies on voice-recognition for a couple of years now, I've been regularly annoyed at the fact that the slightest background noise (i.e. the sound made by the planet revolving) throws the recognition all to hell. How this new translation system will cope with background noise along the lines of tanks/APCs, choppers, gunfire, screaming locals etc. will a real test of it's useability IMO.
"Any similarity between the hooting of a million eager monkeys and Slashdot is purely coincidental." -THEFLASHMAN
English and Korean, Thai, Chinese, Arabic, Albanian, Spanish, and other major European languages.
...
Wow. I knew the European Community was expanding, but I didn't know yet we'd come that far!
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Living is a way of life
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Sure, I can see the benefit to applying this sort of technology to the handicapped, but do reasonably able bodied Americans need yet another way to get lazier? People get in their cars and DRIVE three blocks to the convenience mart, now they won't even have to burn ANY calories... getting in their car, going into the convenience mart, picking up the six-pack and Chee-tos and back home while exerting no more energy that it would to use the shitter.
Well at least they can't patent this one, Wallace and Grommit have prior art.
Picture this: a walking robot exoskeleton, made as light and compact as possible, with computer compensation for weakened limbs or limited range of motion.
For that matter, consider the non-battlefield applications for this kind of technology. Suppose you could climb everest in a powered suit that provided you heat, pressurization, and cut the effort in half?
How about diving and swimming with powered legs?
This is very cool indeed.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Well, we all know this is going to be used to make super powered soldiers that can turn over tanks with their bare hands etc. (incidentally, didn't they have one of these in Dark Angel), but I've got another use for it - the ultimate home exercise machine. Just set it to oppose movement instead of helping, and you've got an all-over workout that you can do while you're doing regular stuff. Assuming you're doing something more than just watching TV all day.
Imagine a heavily armed marine striding up to you, asking you a question, and depending on a machine to translate the response. Would any us who have used babelfish want our lives to depend on this technolgy? Yikes. The only question would be, should I just keep my mouth shut, or should I run like hell?
Jacobsen says he's thinking in the opposite direction--about putting more human nature into the machines. His idea is to build an exoskeleton intelligent enough to take care of the soldier wearing it. If the human trooper is badly wounded, the machine would say to itself, in effect, "Take this guy home."
... that's right ... the world's best power drinker! Woohoo! Homer Simpson would be jealous. I could lift full-size kegs to my mouth to extract the last drops of sweet beer. I could win every bar fight. And when things get really ugly, it takes over, walks straight home, and I'm in bed before I even know it.
Wow, I see another use for these. If the exoskeleton gives me the ability to lift very heavy objects, and it can take me home when I get into trouble, then suddenly I can become
What's your damage, Heather?
How in the hell do you know what the attitude of the average American soldier is? Maybe you've been watching a few too many Vietnam War movies, and haven't been keeping up on current events.
Over the past 10 years or so, the US military has been involved in literally dozens of relief and peacekeeping operations around the world. I know, I was involved one of them, and guess what? Believe it or not, American soldiers were helping people. We didn't kill anyone. We saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives, and we developed close relationships with many of the local people.
As a matter of fact, our battalion had three translators, all of them local, who were invaluable. A reliable automated translator would have been very helpful as an augment to the human translators. It would have helped us save lives and keep good people from being killed by people who happened to be well-armed.
Some people are stupid and uncaring. Some are smart and sensitive to the people around them. Most are somewhere in between. While it's any easy excuse for a joke, your comment is a gross oversimplification.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
With all of these things, we should remember that the great visionaries have forseen the dangers already.In the seminal and prophetic work "The Wrong Trousers" starring Wallace and Gromit, we saw a graphic demonstration of what happens if the security of exoskeleton trousers is suborned by a 'black hat' (or in this case a red glove).
Hope the code for driving these exoskeletons is open source. I want to be able to see what it does !!
I fear that M$ may choose to implement raw sockets (eye sockets, mainly) in Skeleton XP. Crackers will take over my suit, and use it to kick random passers-by and dogs to death. Or alternately, a trapdoor in closed source suits will allow the CIA to orchestrate massed ranks of publicly owned trousers to invade Cuba or something. A new angle on conscription, clearly.....
On a positive note, clearly of interest would be a Beowulf cluster of exoskeletons, which could be used for formation dancing and even synchronised swimming and minefield clearance.
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.