Slashdot Mirror
Powered Exoskeletons In The Near Future?
PhReaKyDMoNKeY writes "Discover Magazine's latest issue has a story about powered exoskeletons and how they aren't terribly far off. Sounds pretty damn cool, except maybe for the centaur flatbed model. Screw a Segway, gimme one of these babies."
I've seen sci-fi movies and every time they open up one of these exo-skeletons they find a scrawny, blue alien.
I don't want humans to evolve into that.
No to Exoskeletons!
exoskeletons really BUG me.
Is it just me, or does the image of the soldier on the first page of that article look like someone tried to add the "exoskeleton" in Microsoft Paint?
This space intentionally left blank.
Armor baby!
I will become the machine.
-Rothfuss
I'm too old for the army, but I think it would be extremely fun to put on my "running pants" and motorcycle helmet and run 50 miles to work like the bionic man. I hope that the no pedestrians rule would be waived so I could use the commuter carpool lane.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
you won't fix in it.
absolutely revolutionize the tactical structure of the armies posessing them. For example, if every footsoldier has the survivability of a light APC and the punch of one as well due to the increased load bearing capacity, this obviously lends a serious edge to that army. The consequences go deeper than that, as well. Becuase of increased complexity, more staff will be needed for support, and increased soldier skill will be needed. This dovetails exactly with the shift from large standing armies composed of recruits (think WW2 america or the chinese army of today) to small, highly trained special operations units (which in combination with advanced air support, are devastation incarnate, as proved in Afghanistan today).
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
One of my favorite The Onion articles:
Stephen Hawking Builds Robotic Exoskeleton . It's got a great photo.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Great now we have even more power over our "foes". Can't we find a better use.
Run..Its cyborg godzilla!!
Carpe meam simiam!
I've wanted a powered suit ever since reading Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the movie didn't have them, which was a major disappointment).
When I first saw the exoskeleton in Aliens I instantly thought, "that's awesome". Then I wondered how soon we would begin seeing that technology become reality.
Cool how scifi tech transitions into the real world.
Let's just make sure that these things aren't vulnerable to one of those Outlook virii. I would appreciate not having my limbs twisted or ripped off while I'm inside one. ;)
Now if we could just get some "attachments," say, something like... "Go, go gadget penis."
-"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle." - Arthur Dent
Could this be the start of something like that movie, where the guy had all those body parts manufactured and implanted into his body?
the million dollar man or something i think it was called...
then again... i'm probbally wrong
Fight Spammers!
Way back when I was a kid, I used to wish dearly for the actual existence of the Robotech Cyclone body armor. The motor cycles that converted into mechanized body armor (invid saga).... anyways.... forget this sissy stuff, give me a cyclone. ;)
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
How long is it until this becomes extremly dangerous? I'm not sure everyone can use one of these...
Plus, being able to climb into a superhuman suit (superstrength) would be an EXCELLENT way to steal stuff. Crime would skyrocket, would it be introduced. Please understand that once something is invented, it is nearly impossible to uninvent it. Furthermore, the exoskeleton has no real peaceful benefit. And in today's age, no information is safe. Consider this.
Everything is mainstream now.
I will believe that exoskeletons are possible when I see such other anime cliches as germ warfare, human cloning, apocalyptic events and cynical plots to form a one world government come true.
Oh wait...
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I wonder if you could build a regenerative motor that throttles on and off, and when it's off, it uses the person's motion to recharge. This is how electric cars recharge (regenerate during braking, etc.) so I don't see why it can't be done here. Sure, it's a magnitude smaller than an electric car, but then again, they're only shooting for 2hp not 100 or more. I think if you have someone walking, that should generate a few watts to charge it right?
For some reason this makes me think of Wallace and Gromit's The Wrong Trousers. Not that that's a Bad Thing.
-- D.
I'm worried about the dry-cleaning bill, though.
--Chag
--Chag
You would figure that TLC would have better people to make better servers. The site is /.ed
Viagra?
1964: Government sponsored Hardiman project. I remember reading about this in a robots book in 1997.
Link to howstuffworks
I still want a veritech fighter. I'd go to war in one of those.
Read, enjoy!
The site is slashdotted already. Does anyone have a mirror?
I'm not talking about the movie.
The book begins with this incredible battle scene in which a handful of soldiers in armored suits that can jump miles at a time take over an entire planet.
- James
"Add a soupçon(?) of artificial intelligence and the suit could save its wearer if he is wounded. "You could send a command to take this guy home," says Stephen Jacobsen, CEO of Sarcos."
Then so could the enemy, I would guess...
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
I can just imagine what will happen if there is a hardware or software failure (or a virus) and your exoskeleton moves beyond its intended range of motion. Snap! There goes your leg. Snap! Your arm. Snap! Maybe your back.
"Drechsel's sense of freedom will expand even more once he and his colleagues attach pistons to the hinges, each firing in response to his subtlest finger twitch or leg flex."
"Gromit! These are the wrong trousers!"
"We had young guys from the Air Force who had never seen a computer; they were successfully loading bombs with this thing in 15 minutes,"
This would obviosly be good for our armys if we perfected the power supply, probably compact fuel cells.
On the other hand, maybe a little farther off, this could be incorporated into a cyborg. Maybe 50 years from now, you could have your intelligence supplemented by a high-power quanum computer or molecular dot computer. You could have a "second skin" made out of high-strength carbon nanotubes. For those not in the know, nanotubes are thin molecule-sized tubes of carbon that are about 50 times as strong as steel. They are amazing. They can act as computer circiuts (they may replace silicon) and artificial muscles.
Anyway, you could have an exoskeleton of carbon nanotubes that interfaces with your brain via the quantum computer. The nanotubes could greatly supplement your strengh by acting as muscle and protect you from injury. A bullet would have no way of penetrating a nanotube "second skin". The exoskeleton may even be able to be made to inflate in an emergency, allowing you to survive things like plane crashes.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
For example, if every footsoldier has the survivability of a light APC and the punch of one as well due to the increased load bearing capacity, this obviously lends a serious edge to that army.
Would it?
You could, for example, outfit each soldier to be able to move at superhuman speed, and carry a couple of tons of equipment... but wouldn't it make more sense just to give that soldier a jeep? Same capabilities, and lower complexity and cost.
Want to be able to move over any kind of terrain? Send a helicopter instead of a jeep.
An exoskeleton is basically a vehicle optimized to mimic human mobility ranges. Which is silly - optimize a vehicle to work as a vehicle, and it'll be simpler and more efficient.
Exoskeletons are really, really cool, and I want one too, but I don't think they'd be terribly useful in war, for the same reason that jet packs aren't (conventional vehicles do the job better).
BURKE: I heard you were working in the cargo docks.
RIPLEY: That's right.
BURKE: Running loaders, forklifts, that sort of thing?
===
It's obvious that this is a dead-end profession just waiting to happen!!! Don't buy into the hype!
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I used to design working exoskeletons blueprints in high school, but never built them. I had several models. A communication/commander one, a mechanized infantry one, and a fire support version. I even had one that could jet around for short periods of time. The only problem being the energy used to power it had to come from somewhere. I fixed that with a combination of fuel cell, human power, and hydrolics. Very advanced systems for my age, but I was confident that they'd work.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
So, when I used to work at the Atomic Dinosaur Laboratory, we used to do all sorts of anotomical structural engineering. (You know those dinosaur exhibits at museums - well, they are polysynthetic molds of the real fossils... don't be fooled). Well, for a long time, we talked about how cool it would be to take the Thorium out of smoke detectors (lessons learned in the dormitories) and an alpha source and just create a nuclear powered animatronic dinosaur... I know for a fact that, at the Universities, people talk about this stuff and draw up blueprints in their spare time... Apparently, there are some people who have started to actually build prototypes...
Anyhow, keep an eye out for stuff like this being developed by your car companies like Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Mercedes, BMW, et al... They got the stereo-3D auto-CAD systems to design it, the robotics experience, and the polymers material science to pull something like this off in real-time and at a commercial level...
Think about the Aliens construco-bot thing that is used for space construction... but with a Mercedes or Toyota logo on it.
Oh - and also think about the Battle-Bot contests on TV, and your old BattleTech and RoboTech role-playing games... Think those were just games? I don't think so...
they will have a penis!! my god!! think of the possibilities... 80% of the world is accessible with something with legs... but with one of those penises.. a 100% will be accessible...
Using these suits would bring new meaning to WWF wrestling! It would be like Robot Wars and WWF combined, but without the steriods.
Although we have striven much to make our weapons of war far more accurate we still have substantial problems with the fact that the only safe way to deliver these munitions is from thousands of feet in the air. It's likely that when the numbers are tallied up as many afghan civilians will be dead as US civilians killed in the WTC attack. In an increasingly interconnected world, innocent casualties are increasingly less tolerable thus making what may be necessary military action very difficult to get the political motivation to undertake.
On the other hand if you can pack a tremendous amount of firepower and armor into a man portable unit (such as power armor). It makes it feasible to put men on the ground quickly without significantly increasing risks of casualties, etc. These men on the ground have a greater ability to precisely attack important targets than we can ever hope to achieve with a cruise missile or laser guided bomb.
The benefit is that the combatants will be the ones who really get involved and the civilians should be able to remain relatively unscathed.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Furthermore, the exoskeleton has no real peaceful benefit.
Yeah, I mean, why would a parapalegic want to walk?
Did you bother to read the story? If you had you would have read:
But François Pin, who heads the Oak Ridge effort, sees dozens of nonmilitary uses as well. "Construction is a $4 billion industry in this country, and it's very primitive. We are injuring people every day. Cargo handling, search and rescue--the possibilities are endless." Ultimately, exoskeletons could transform society. The elderly could regain the physical abilities of youth, and paraplegics could walk. "
Steve M
How about a beowulf cluster of these... stomping a hole in Ossama bin Laden!
"I got KP cus my suit crashed dude, and I had to give sarge the three finger salute!"
Perhaps they'll put XP in it for an OS, since according to the ads, XP can already make you fly!
So when do the liquid metal exoskeletons come out? :-)
and with a link in a just comment no less!
I game, therefore I am...
For those of you having trouble getting through to the article you can see a picture of the proposed exoskeleton here
:)
the same was said for nuclear technology, how it's only purpose is destructive (although it's medical and power usefuls are quite helpful). any technology can be used negatively, it's only a matter if we create safe gaurds against abuse. i could see these becoming very useful for fire fighters running into burning buildings (or collapsing trade centers for that matter).
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Right now, there's 3 specific things stopping the production and effective use of powered-suits/exoskeletons (and sadly most of the solutions still fall into the range of Sci-Fi)
1. Power source - a portable fusion reactor seems the most likely. Flywheels perhaps, but containment is an issue. (though rupturing a charged flywheel would create some excellent battlefield fireworks)
2. Light yet Strong building material - current alloys are on the right track, but so far the magic strength/weight ratio has yet to be found
3. Control methods - right now, even our most advanced robotics control is stilll slow and cubersome analog input- joysticks and buttons. Something along the line of either thought-reading or perhaps datasuits that mimic the pilot's limb motions.
And from the article, I thus quote:
Kazerooni expects partial versions will hit the market first. "A factory worker might have just a pair of enhanced arms," he says. "There will be many job-specific applications for arms alone or legs alone."
This is providing of course that said worker is strong enough to carry and support the enhanced arms, I can't help but wonder... If a man screams in agony in an empty factory after having his arms ripped from their sockets, will there be a sound?
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
So, when we were working at the Atomic Dinosaur Laboratory (Chicago, IL), we would talk about the book Dinotopia and The World Beneath... where they had Robotic Exo-Dinosaurs!!!
Perhaps not everything with an exoskeleton is a Bug? (i.e. Ankylosaurus)
I think that an atomic powered robotic dinosaur would be pretty cool to have and haul stuff around. It would definately beat having a pick up truck.
Vehicles are designed to transport, designing a vehicle to fight is less than effective. If you look at a tank, it is basically a truck to carry a big gun around, and enough armor to protect that gun so that it can blow lots of things up. In the end it's terribly inefficient, and imprecise. It's excellent for open warfare on a cleanly drawn battlefield, but for fighting house to house, etc, it is a poor choice.
If you look at the recent history of warfare where tanks were available, look at what happens. You have the tanks run these rapid attacks that overwhelm large open territory but then you get into a village or city and suddenly tanks are useless (unless you plan to blow the city to smithereens). suddenly you are back to a style of warfare little beyond fighting with muskets and swords.
On the other hand, if you can make relatively heavy weapons and armor available in an infantryman size package, you can get into much smaller areas and still have overwhelming force. You'll still need infantry, but this provides a signifcant augmentation to the availabilt of heavy firepower in close.
Also, think about situations where you simply need to police a city. Policing a city with a tank is impossible because you end up killing a lot of bystanders and destroying lots of property needlessly. Having a few armored troops allows you to focus your attack much more precisely. Try chasing that rebel with AK-47 down an alley with an M1A1 and see how well it works.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Forget SpringWalker and these other technologies that aren't available yet--you can get a pair of PowerSkip boots today. These were posted on Slashdot last April 1st, and many people thought they were a joke; they aren't, and you can be out running around in them and jumping cars for around $800-1000.
The only certainty is entropy.
> Screw a Segway, ...
...
If the exoskeletons are anotomically correct enough, you just might be able to do that
"Old man yells at systemd"
When a uses it's brakes to stop, it is taking all the kinetic energy it has and bleeding it off as heat, via the brakes. That energy is lost.. so using that energy to generate power to be used later makes good sense.
A person walking around is not losing energy in the same fashion... they are using just what they need to move around.
Unfortunately, I seriously doubt there would be any real military uses for quite a while, with the exception of heavy-lifting.
It's one thing to have a device that can handle (relatively) slow, deliberate movements, and augments strength. It's a completely different matter to have a armored, fast-responding 'cyborg'.
The biggest advantage, and use of this technology for the near term is in warehouse/repair duty. Forklifts are usually clumsy at best, where an exoskeleton could supplant (but not replace) these lumbering beasts.
They'd be great for, say, Home Depot. This way an employee can pick up a couple of 100 lb bags of cement, and stack it in the store as easily as it would be do stack a bean-bag.
But a military application? Not anytime soon. Let's not forget these devices require a power source. For the few minutes of operation, they'd be great. But don't forget that adding weapons and armor will do two things: SEVERELY tax the power supply, and when the power is gone, the frame makes the soldier a sitting duck for a fair amount of time while the suit is either re-charging/fueling, or the soldier is scrambling out of the suit.
Any more armor than enough to stop standard rifle/handgun fire would weigh FAR too much to be practical for the time being.
Even with gas-powered fuel cells... there wouldn't be enough power for an armored unit. The response time would be too great.
A neural interface at the base of the skull (to transmit the motion signals from the soldier's brain to the suit) would speed up the response time greatly. But let's not forget that things are still bound by Mr. Newton's laws. The mass of even a lightly armored limb doesn't start and stop on a dime easily (not with enough armor to stop hand-held arms fire, anyway). It would take tremendously powerful superconducting motors to achieve that feat. But then, you're adding a cryo pack to the suit for the magnets. Even more weight and parts to break.
Not that the military wouldn't toy with the idea; it's just that they realize the practical limitations as well. Strength-enhancing suits I can see; armored body-suits... not for a while.
It's a great idea, until you deploy them without a heavy support team nearby. The logistics alone on an armored suit would be prohibitive. It's not like they can operate for weeks on end with only MRE's and sanitizer-tablets.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
This reminds me of Power Armor from the Fallout video game series.
Imagine some 31337 Russian h4x0r taking control of a division or two for nice game of war craft. Brings a whole new meaning to being 0wn4d!
The russians already have this: BBC. There have been other examples of exoskeleton-type things in the past as well.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Don't get me wrong-- exploring the cosmos and bringing light to halt is great and all, but I'm not going to be impressed until I can get by without ever having to use my muscles again. And, have you ever tried to mount a plasma canon on a Segway? Forget it. It's like I always say, robots need to spend less time welding, and more time kicking ass.
Cache Rules Everything Around Me
one bit of advice for these guys, don't use an MS OS or the fabled screen of death could be literal.
.Net servers in Redmond went down and their exoskeletons crashed, making the hapless troops sitting ducks. A survivor said, "we kept getting "Invalid License Key, contact your system administrator" when we tried to fire our weapons!"
... "an MS security hole was blamed today when a Marine guard's exoskeleton ran amok and killed five outside the US embassy in Islamabad. Middle Eastern hackers are suspected."
I can see it now... "a platoon wiped out on Mindanao because the
Or
Add a soupçon of artificial intelligence and the suit could save its wearer if he is wounded. "You could send a command to take this guy home"
Think about it, running with a bullet in you leg?
Sounds kinda painfull..
;^)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Heck, just look at these things.
The prospects remind me of several cartoon series
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Wouldn't some kind of VR controlled robot be more practical?
Now Americans can gain another 2 to 3 hundred pounds each and still be able to get to Jack-in-the-Box without having to be airlifted!
I was drawing up sketches/ideas for these just this summer...
My idea incorporated nitinol wire however... just a different method for the same ends.
From where I stand, I see the ultimate fate of humanity isn't looking too different than the Borg. We are in the process of augmenting ourselves with machinery (both within and without) at the same time as we're advancing networking and developing artifical intelligence. To me, the ultimate end result of this curve is large scale human-machine convergence with some form of shared intelligence. There will be the "haves", and the "have-nots" at first... But intelligence is rarely tempered with compassion in groupthink scenarios, and a networked intelligence is the quintessential form of that. In a situation like this, I can see the "have-nots" being:
Although its kinda grim, would being a Borg be all that bad? Is being an individual as important as having the seemingly unlimited resources of a hive mind? Is the creativity of a billion people collaborating through a hive mind any more or less than the creativity of a single man?
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
It sounds from the article like they're a lot closer to something like the loader that Ripley drove in the movie Aliens than they are to a mobile infantry solution. i.e. bulky, slow and clumsy but hellaciously strong. It's going to be a long haul to refine this stuff to the high degree of dexterity needed for the applications they have in mind. But it sounds cool--good luck to them!
---
Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
next we breed bigger human beings for fitting in a such elemental suit
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I think we need to consider internal applications first. Specifically, a powered spine for Congress-persons...
Every time I hear "Special Forces", I always think of "Special Olympics."
I probably shouldn't let the Special Forces guys hear me say tha*CRUNCH* AAGH! MY NECK!
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Big, hulking suits of armor and powered transportation that let a single soldier outfight and outmaneuver others...
...is this unique? Not really. Think of the Middle Ages, when Western-style warfare was ruled by mounted knights, with their 100-pound steel suits of full plate armor and their heavy war horses. Back then, armor and equipment was more equally balanced with the lethality of weapons. Hence, small units of elite troops (heavy cavalry) could rout much larger units of normal infantry.
When firearms started to really catch on, mounted knights slowly lost their elite status as they became less effective militarily. The balance between armor and weapons swung once more in favor of weapons, and it became more important to put lots of soldiers on the ground with weapons than it was to field small, specialized units.
So, you have a circle between highly trained units and large masses of soldiers that starts with the Roman legions, goes through Middle Age heavy cavalry, on to the massive conscript armies of Napoleon, then to the German Panzer units of the initial blitzkrieg, to the advent of "endless wave" doctrine used to most effect by China and North Korea, and finally to the development of close air-supported special forces. I obviously focused on land warfare and still left out a lot of different military innovations and tactics throughout history, but you can see a reversible shift between emphasis on lots of weapons and emphasis on specialized, highly trained and well-protected troops.
Maybe more importantly for the here and now, the US military has recognized the need to be flexible, and that both types of land warfare can be effective in the right situation. The many branches of their special operations troops and their huge armored divisions both have their place at the table.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Here we go again-- another sci-fi book comes true! Well, sorta. In Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers", they have powered exoskeletons like this. If you want to find out exactly how they're useful, at least, more useful than either straight vehicles (i.e. jeeps, tanks, helicopters, etc.) or infantrymen on foot with very BIG backpacks, read the book. The disadvantages are also mentioned in the book. I never saw the movie, so I don't know what-all it says in there.
DARPA's exoskeleton proposal
Note for military exoskeleton designers: perhaps bury the powerpack deep inside the armor; a large obvious powerpack jutting out from the rear of the exoskeleton may be counterproductive.
Other things to consider: perhaps also do not label the powerpack "powerpack" and do not color it bright red when the rest of the armor is dark blue.
Imagine: the onboard computer crashes and the knee motor decides to do a 360. Goodbye leg.
I've seen this happen on the legged robots here in the lab. When that happens we just hit the kill switch and resolder the broken wires. I'd hate to have the "exoskeleton" kill someone because of a computer hiccup.
For the slashdot effect ????
No sig for you!!
A properly-designed exo-skeleton could really extend the range of human beings. If they built one with a remote control unit, you'd never have to get off the couch.
If I could bring back the dead at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tchernobyl, I would gladly get rid of today's nuclear power plants. They are, in any case, inefficient and dangerous. Even in industrialized countries, most don't even break even without government aid.
And I know of no nuclear-based medical technologies. Are you referring things like X-rays and cancer treatment? Nuclear technology is hardly needed for those applications; all you need is to dig out a radioactive rock from the ground and expose someone to it.
No, it's clear that nuclear technology is a dangerous technology whose invention was a dark day in the history of humanity. That said, I don't have anything against these exoskeleton things. They look helpful for handicapped people and, if we're lucky, may eventually lead to an Angelic Layer-like game :).
It is fine and easy to level a tiny country like Afganistan, but what happens with something more like India or Indonesia???
Ooooh, my dreams of becoming a human Battle Mech may come true in this lifetime!!
Visions of the Microsoft Exoskelotors come flooding into my mind.
Reboot!
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"So far, nobody has an actuator that approaches the required efficiencies."
"Power is the crucial missing element, Jacobsen believes. Everything else is difficult but doable."
Game over.
Quick disclaimer: I actually am in favor of this kind of research getting done, if by the DoD so be it, as long as it isn't stuck under the veil of official secrecy.
Is anybody else dying to borrow this thing for a day, and track down some of the people who picked on you during high school?
Give *me* an atomic wedgie, will you?!
Maybe it's just me...
:-)
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
And fulfill Manifest Destiny!!!
We've discovered this article, which is an interesting read. In other news, their sysadmins have "Discovered" the Slashdot effect. Right now, I bet they're thinking "Ah, the thrill of Discovery!" ;)
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Yes, and if I could bring back the dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I'd surely get rid of today's airplanes, because they allowed the bombs to be dropped. They are, in any case, inefficient and dangerous. Even in industrial countries, most Airlines don't even break even without government aid.
It's clear that airplane technology is a dangerous technology whose invention was a dark day in the history of humanity.
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
Are they suggesting in any way when they say:
"About 3 percent of the world can be accessed in a wheeled vehicle, but 85 percent can be reached by something with legs,"
that this would be useful for people with disabilities, such as perhaps giving them the ability to walk? I can't picture how it would work, but the basic premise for motorized and enhanced limbs makes me think it might.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
They're trying to go straight to the human sized robots. They need to make large robots that plug in to a wall and stay in a factory first. Something like the loader they mentioned from the alien movie as a fork-lift replacement. This will let them perfect the control mechanisms and they can work on miniaturization and speed improvements from there. The article even says that the problem they're having is that actuators just aren't as efficient as muscles. Wasn't there some kind of fibre that contracted more efficiently than muscles? I could swear I saw something like that on Beyond 2000 (hah! I just have to laugh remembering that name), The Next Step, or one of those Discovery channel shows... BlackGriffen
That's right, the idea is as old as the Solar System, anyone ever read Yoko Tsuno as a kid?
http://chg96.free.fr/lectures/yoko/albums.htm
Check out the 1974 book, if you look closely at the picture, you'll notice she's wearing a powered exoskeleton. As a kid, I flipped out on this idea!
Good point. However, would it be possible to somehow make it a body-powered device? Slashdot had an article about those a while back. While body-power isn't as good as plugging the thing into the wall, that could be *part* of the power supply. There could also be generators built in; the more you walk or move, the more power you supply to the suit. Batteries could (and probably would) still be incorporated into the suit. Maybe (though I'm not entirely sure) the research being done in the area of biomechatronics could prove somehow useful. Finally, there's everybody's all-time favourite: solar cells! ;) It is possible to use solar cells, except for one thing-- aren't they usually reflective? And IIRC from 9th grade physical science, isn't it somehow necessary to the design that they be reflective? That may not be a good thing when you're trying to hide from the enemy.
But I do agree to a certain extent: the soldier in the suit can't be loaded to the hilt and armed to the teeth; this whole apparatus apparently takes a great deal of power. But there are several ways to provide power, and these ways *can* be combined.
When is someone going to invent a Shipstone?
gold23
Trust not a man who's rich in flax / His morals may be sadly lax
The 3rd of the 4 Matt Helm spy movies, starring Dean Martin, featured guys in a Mexican brewery loading kegs into a cooler with primitive Aliens style exoskeletons. Just saw it on AMC or TCM last night, I think the movie is 'The Enforcers'.
Ok, never mind, I'll email Roger Ebert.
... but here's something u might not have heard was that we killed more people in the fire bombings of Tokyo than the nuclear explosions did.
Any technology is dangerous when in the wrong hands. I agree that nuclear technology does prevent a unique threat because it kills so many in such a small amount of time, but because of the spread of nuclear technology, a sufficient deterent has been created.
I bet people where saying the same thing when the cannon ball and cannon was invented. TNT could kill a lot now.
We better keep inventing. If we don't continue to advance, people who evil intentions will advance and use their advances to do great harm. If we continue to advance, we can control discovered technologies and hopefully be able to keep dangerous uses in check.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Now wait a minute! Both books are excellent if you take them for what they were intended to be... Starship Troopers was more social commentary then anything else (and a good one too) while armor was strictly a sci/fi action novel. It's not exactly and apples to apples comparison you're making. I, for one, liked Armor damnit!
- The auditors said to secure the server... hand me that duct-tape -
Can anyone direct me to a URL discussing antimatter powerplants and the creation thereof? I have a vague recollection of reading that approximately a few pounds worth of antimatter would provide enough energy to transport us to the nearest stars, surely it would be possible to use this massive power supply for this application? I guess it comes down to how antimatter and matter collisions generate power. It's an interesting concept though, I assume most people aren't going to be comfortable with nuclear powered versions of the same.
Although power issues remain thorny, control technologies have come a long way over the past decade. In the late 1990s, Pin's group built an artificial arm that responds instantly to commands and can load 4,000-pound bombs into F-15 jet bays. The operator grabs a handlelike device at the end of the arm's framework, and the machine follows his motions, providing force-feedback so he can feel the bomb's weight, shape, and inertia. "We had young guys from the Air Force who had never seen a computer; they were successfully loading bombs with this thing in 15 minutes," Pin says.
and this is a good thing?
full length albums complete with print resolution artwork -- earth2willi.com
Throughout our human history, superior military might has driven our design cycle. From the wheel to the atomic bomb. When we're mature enough as species perhaps will move beyond this. [I doubt it]
Someday perhaps my son in the USMC could be better protected by an exoskeleton. In the meantime I know that my friend's young disabled daughter will reap the benefits of this type of research in her lifetime.
I wouldn't. Dropping the nukes to end WWII was a hard thing to do but the best option available. For both sides. Imagine the body count had a traditional invasion of the Japanese mainland been required!
/. should be good for a -5 troll, but I never was a Karma Whore. :)
Nuclear energy is neutral, neither good or evil. Men are good, evil or stupid. The operators of Chernobyl were stupid and governed by evil men didn't give enough of a damn about their subjects to build in the proper safeguards when the plant was originally built.
The only problem I see with our current Nuclear tech is disposal of the waste, but if our stupid leaders would quit quivering in fear and allow the scientists and engineers to do their job a solution would be possible. Hell, recycle the stuff or just condense it down to small cans and launch them into the Sun.
Being this politically incorrect on
Democrat delenda est
This exoskeleton is okay, but I'll hold off until I can get my own Gundam
like any ultra-rugged mode of transportation, suburban drones will snap these up. I can imagine getting stepped on by a Ford Gargantua (TM) with Firestone boots as I'm walking along the street.
Of course, all of these available at local dealerships will still have the turrets, armour, and awesome destructive power (TM) of the editions made for the army.
If you really want to get scared, think about one of these things with a cellular phone (emitting tons of microwaves next to the control circuits) clutched in its stainless steel fists yammering in the mall. The wearer's inane conversation would, of course, be amplified to 140db.
----------
I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
We should also get rid of coal power
Chernobly: Deaths:31
Coal power: ~50,000 per year
A chernobyl scale realease could not happen in our type of pressurized water reactor. Unlike Chernobyl, we have a containment building to keep the radiation in during a meltdown.
Nuclear power is not inneficient. A nuke plant only requires 15,000 pounds of fuel a year. That would fit into a 4x4x4 foot area. It is cheaper than coal and pollution free. Don't succumb to fear mongering.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
-SAM
Nuclear technology is akin to fire - it gives us access to more energy than we can otherwise get. What we choose to do with that energy is where the problems arise. Remember, far more people were killed in fire-bombings than in the nuclear attacks, and many more workers have been killed in coal-mine explosions than were killed at Chernobyl.
Are you referring things like X-rays and cancer treatment? Nuclear technology is hardly needed for those applications; all you need is to dig out a radioactive rock from the ground and expose someone to it.
Wrong again. Most such cancer treatments use radioactive isotopes that are produced in a nuclear reactor. You can just "dig up a rock" and think you'll get enough of a dose to kill cancer.
Seriosly, stop with the "dark day for humanity" crap and think! Nuclear technology is like any other technology: it has risks and benefits, and a rational examination of those risks and benefits (without giving in to deep-rooted fears) shows that sooner or later nuclear technology will have to be a component of our future energy supply. Of course, fusion power is preferable to fission, but one way or the other the choice is clear: if we want to maintain a modern society that supports the full population of the planet, nuclear power is the ticket.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
I just hope Vince McMahon doesn't get wind of this technology. It would really make for some great PPVs though.
No Sig For You
If you add enough armor to a soldier to stop a bullet, the soldier will look like a turtle. He won't be able to move easilly, the drain on the suit's power source (to move such a huge weight) will be large, and the whole thing will be too expensive. Same things for putting heavy weapons on a grunt
On the other hand, consider this: the GI has a small, cheap exoskeleton that lets him run at 20 MPH without tiring, and lets him carry an extra 50 lbs (above the weight of the exoskeleton) without feeling it. Now put an active camoflage suit on him (ie a computer controls his clothing on an inch by inch basis to match the color of the background - there are people working on this right now), a communications & display setup, so that he knows as much as a guy in a tank or chopper, and the batteries to power all this.
And all this weighs in at 50 lbs, so he can still move as if unencumbered. This enhances the soldier, instead of trying to compete with a vehicle.
Personally I think any civillian not smart enough to get the hell away from an active combatant (ie - shooting at me) has just signed up to catch some stray rounds.
Given that, then the point is made about the issues of laser guided and satellite guided weapons. How can I avoid something that falls mostly silently from the sky with little if any warning. On the other hand, if people show up on the ground, at least I can be aware of the danger.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
not to burst a bubble (i too think it would be really cool to do =), but i imagine 'running pants' would probably end up tearing the person wearing them to shreds at really high velocities. when you go fast in a car, your butt takes most of the abuse (and lower back when you hit a pothole, etc), but with these, your feet, knees, and hips would take quite a beating. compound fractures come to mind perhaps. :^)
imagine being on a childrens bike (with no gears, when the back wheel spins, the pedals spin, etc). now, sit on it, bolt your feet to the pedals, and have a buddy drive you down the freeway at 50 miles per hours. ouch
Rolling on wheels is much more efficient than running. I imagine that the exoskeleton should have wheels so that when you are on manageable terrain, use wheels for movement, and to negotiate tougher terrain, revert back to using legs.
As for the whole exoskeleton vs. segway thing, why not just segway into the exoskeleton as part of the wheels? Imagine if you had one wheel on each foot, then you can just roll down the road - and if the exoskeleton has more power available to it, it makes the speed and range even better!
Yes, I'm sure you'd be much happier if the second world war had ended in a massive, D-Day style ground force invasion of the Japanese homeland by Russian and American forces. And the Chernobyl accident was of course far worse than the industrial accidents that cause thousands of deaths, injuries and cases of cancer each year. Because Nuclear Stuff Is Bad! Remember that technology can't be "bad" -- but people can easily be, and will use whatever technology exists. Fault human decisions, not some inanimate concept.
This is really more for the moderators than anyone else, I'm maxed out on karma so i'll take a hit.
p an.reut/index.html In case you dont want to read the link i'll give you the gist of it. A japanese professor has patents on the methods used for balancing a segway scooter, in fact he made one over 15 years ago as part of robotics research. This guy is totally cool though, instead of trying to sue the segway guy he's actually agreed that if segway says he did it first, he'll hand over all related patents for a buck.
Few days ago while going through CNN I found this article http://cnn.com/2002/TECH/industry/01/14/segway.ja
Sometimes I must consider the karmatic implacations of my actions.
...oOOo..'(_)'..oOOo...
The cybernetic ninja from Metal Gear Solid will be here before we know it. Woo hoo!
And I know of no nuclear-based medical technologies. Are you referring things like X-rays and cancer treatment? Nuclear technology is hardly needed for those applications; all you need is to dig out a radioactive rock from the ground and expose someone to it.
Wrong! For example: Brachytherapy treatment of cervical cancer is being done with Cs137 radioactive seeds of considerable activity (~40 mCi). You will never find a "rock" of that stuff in nature. Do you have any idea of how many lives are saved yearly, in the US alone, by using reactor obtained radio isotopes? Do not comment on something you know nothing about.
Still, there may be a place for a weapon similar to the steadicam mounted one used in the movie "Aliens". An exoskeletal leg unit with a hip level mounted support for, say, a 25mm cannon or gatling gun.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
is there a option for missiles, or perhaps a few lasers. i think it should also come with a playsation 2 running linux. :) just one thing.. the controller should control the actual weapons :) hehehe
Lizard "Never let them set limits on your mind!"
The Ambushers contained a scene where workers were moving beer barrels with powered exoskeletons. This film was made in 1967, and those things looked almost like the loaders in Aliens. Okay, not quite but you could see the beginning of an idea.
Dino's estate should sue James "I'm king of the world" Cameron.
Ultimately, exoskeletons could transform society
Speaking of Segway, havent we heard this before? Call me when we have suits like the ones the space marines in StarCraft had.
--Yahiko
Everything I say is a lie.
Except that. And that. And that. And that.
Battle Mechs
check out THE MIGHTY MC HAWKING'S MP3s.
http://www.mchawking.com
I saw a tv story, discovery channel I think, a while back on a suit to help nurses when lifting patients. The prototype works, the problem was the wires out the back for power.
There is a story about it hereEnjoy -jim
but wouldn't it make more sense just to give that soldier a jeep?
No, for several reasons. Want examples? Read Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden (warning, movie is reputed to have avoided anything involving insight or thought, but I highly recommend the book. It manages to balance readable action with reasonably objective insight).
An exoskeleton is basically a vehicle optimized to mimic human mobility ranges.
Exactly, and human mobility ranges are IDEAL for rough terrain and urban terrain. Pick a war:
Basically, there are two kinds of wars: those which offer a maneuverable battlefield, and those that don't. In the former, air superiority and ground armor (read: tanks, not jeeps) are the decisive factor. In the latter, the amount of firepower, coordination, tactical information, and maneuverability of the foot soldier is the key, and exoskeletons will allow the foot soldier to have a serious advantage in those areas, and probably to gain some armor too eventually. Note also that opponents of the US will be trying to arrange non-maneuverable battlefields, because it's becoming clear that challenging the US on that field is suicidal, just as the Arab countries have stopped starting tank wars with Israel and instead moved to terrorism and popular uprising.
Another lesson from Black Hawk Down - the amount of tactical information available is now exceeding the ability of command elements to grasp it all. The old "fog of war" meant you couldn't see. The new "fog of war" means you can't see the forest because you've got more trees than you can take in. As information and communication equipment is pushed out to the foot soldier (remember, an exo lets you carry more) this problem will only get worse, which means that the challenge for today's (high-tech) military is to improve their information processing systems so they can keep up and use the right info to make good decisions.
(Almost made it through without an Appleseed reference!)
It sounded cool in Starship Troopers but how real are these benefits? For example, how could a human run faster? Sure, the machine can handle it, but a human is still moving inside the machine too. Human legs weren't designed to run at 50km/h. Human joints weren't made to operate at high speeds let alone sustain those high speeds. We'll have soldiers that have severe arthritis well before they can collect senior citizen benefits. ;-)
Not to mention, these suits don't necessarily mean greater endurance in battle. A soldier might have a little more protection but current weapons would probobly be plenty sufficient at disabling a suit as much as a human and what good is a soldier who can't move? Shooting things isn't like in the movies. Even metal things get damaged by regular gunfire
Now I am finally able to assume my true identity... The Mantis!
Seriously though, did anyone other than me watch that short lived sci-fi series on Fox?
Its been a long time since I read the book, but as I recall, Robert Heinlein came up with this idea about 30 years ago in his novella "Starship Troopers". Instead of the jointed exoskeloton mentioned in the Discovery article, soldiers wear a "suit" that is basically made up of nanomotors, sensitive to the movement of the user. Essentially, this system mimics human movement in every way, only it amplifies the strength of the user hundreds of times over. Think of it as full body chainmail armor comprised of millions of tiny motors, all working in unison. This would amplify human musculature much more efficiently than what is being proposed by DARPA. It seems to me that the army hasn't been doing their reading, this exoskeleton is a step in the wrong direction, micromachines are clearly the way to go, pistons and joints seem like old technology by comparison.
"Smokey, this isn't Nam, there are rules." -Walter
look it up. powered exoskeletons aren't new.
This has been out for a while. Over in China and Japan, they have this kind of idea being used by nurses to lift patients in and out of bed. The technology is in the early stages because it uses air compressors on a shelf and the lines run to the exoskeleton, but still it's already in use. They showed this and other contemporary medical technological advances on a show on the Discovery Channel.
If you don't watch at least the Discover Channel and/or TLC every now and then, why watch TV?
The only acceptable excuse is to watch The Crocodile Hunter on Animal Planet.
Surely someone else around here has heard of Troy Hurtubise, who built a robotic exoskeleton to study Grizzly Bears at close range?
http://www.firstrunfeatures.com/vid/proj.html
Memes don't exist. Tell your friends.
> However, would it be possible to somehow make it a body-powered device?
The whole point to this is to supplement or supplant body power. We're not naturally strong enough to do the things we want to do, so we build something like this to aid us. Using body power would pretty much wreck the whole thing. From the article:
The key to success, he thinks, is to find a way to emulate the efficiency of muscle tissue
So, in other words, what they currently have is not as efficient as human muscle tissue is. Any user->machine energy transformation would be terribly inefficient and wasteful. While there might be some muscles that aren't being used much, and so could provide some power, they would tire after a bit. From what little I know about warfare, a tired soldier is not nearly as good, efficient, useful, error-proof, whatever, as a rested soldier.
> There could also be generators built in; the more you walk or move, the more power you supply to the suit.
I'm not as sure about this, but I don't think that would work either, for the same reason you can't have a perpetual motion machine. Attaching a generator to a leg, say, means that more energy is spent in moving that leg. Some of that energy is reclaimed, but even assuming 100% efficiency (that is, that (work sub leg + work sub generator = work sub leg + generator_reclaimed)), you would do just as well to not have it, since it doesn't actually accomplish anything. (like I said, I'm not as sure about this; if anyone knows what they're talking about, please correct or confirm)
-Jason-
Assume we did have perfectly working exoskeletons.
In heavy lifting, how would the weight be transferred from arms to feet? It looks like the arms module is separate from the feet module, which does not touch the ground. So would the soldier's spine be able to cope with the weight? Would his feet?
Now the superhuman running. Would the soldier's knees and other joints be able to move fluidly at high speed for the extended time?
Stephen Hawking has had a working exoskeleton for a few years now. Don't believe me? Check here.
Imagine, if you will, an image processing system that detects and highlights enemy positions. (Think of the scene in Terminator II, when Arnold scans the bar and the people in the bar are highlighted and identified.)
Stick a camera on a gun and suddenly you can shoot around a corner.
Imagine a tricorder-like device which could detect people through walls using thermal or radar technologies.
Imagine one soldier firing a guided rocket at a target that a fellow soldier can see.
In short, don't increase the load, make the load count.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
...those type of things come in really handy when you have to fight off those nasty aliens
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Throw me in a kitfox and jack me in
Ready to rock
--- Do you believe in the day?
I'm very impressed with the machines built there. I'm disappointed, though, that the trend seems to be towards more legs and less balance-oriented control. I was hoping for fully self-contained monopods from that project.
I see an article maing notice about strength-scaling exoskeletons, yet deeper into the threads accompinging this article is frivilous chatter about mecha.
To make doubt here, I have seen exoskeletons that do about 500:1 weight scaling. Yes, those were in a military facility, but they were tethered to high density electricity to keep the hydraluic pumps moving, as this is the only efficent way to do such work. Gears were tried, but too inefficent. Essentially, the skeleton used negative feedback to move the arms and legs. (Essentially, when you moved an arm, you'd press against sensors. The metal arm would move in the direction of your arm, thus releaving pressure against the appropiate sensors.) All the processing was done by your own brain. There were sensors to judge pressure on the sensor regions (arms, torso, and legs), and simple computers could process these accordingly. Z80's could do this without a sweat. The computers simply reacted to simple stimuli. The only prerequisite was that the feedback loop had to be at real-time.
If anybody has READ Starship Troopers, Heinlein mentioned similar ideas in his suits. And unlike all those anime mecha cliche' movies (with exception of Evangelion, which didn't use onboard fission/fusion tanks) Heinlein's suits used good old batteries. The biggest point that Heinlein made though, about Military uses, is that (now I'm paraphrasing his words)
"Weapons aren't dangerous, People are dangerous. In the Military, were teaching you how to become more dangerous for our purposes. If you were caught by a 2 ton Marauder suit (the common heavy weapon suit) with 2 kiloton tacical nukes , and you had a knife, would you have a chance? Or would you try to catch him off guard and climb on his back and try to kill the guy in his suit while he's struggling with the controls?"
One point I see that noone else has made is the cost/effectivness ratio of these devicies. They'd be nice for grunt work having to lift heavy stuffs in a factory (unlike the forklift, takes time to learn, and slower to move than a human). Still, in military uses, Say we deveop a 100 Ton mech which leads a cost of 1.2 trillion dollars. I'd venture that a 10 megaton bomb would cause severe damage to this creation. And more facts are that a 10 megaton bomb can be packed in the size of a breifcase.. Flat out, very cost inefficant.
There are (as an ex-Marine platoon sargeant father-of-friend once told me) three fundamental rules of modern combat:
1. If you see it, you can shoot at it.
2. If you can shoot at it, you can hit it.
3. If you can hit it, it's dead.
So being big and sophisticated is a sure ticket to the Golden BB syndrome (a cheap dinkoid weapon that takes you out becuase it hits the vital third subjuncition of whatever), or the shitstorm syndrome, where some peckerhead you can't even see uses a $100 radio to call in $100,000 worth of artillery on your pointy head... As far back as WW2, the leading cause of casualties in the infantry arms was incoming shellfire...
Heres my website, it will hopefully be updated quarterly. I've gotten positive e-mail messages out of the blue by people who work on this stuff in RL.
. ht m
http://people.mw.mediaone.net/celticfiddle/home
Anyway please mod this up, had I known about what slashdot had done I would have made a post earlier. Don't let this message get buried, please!
I have been reading these exoskeleton articles for longer than the holographic memory articles -- that is, a REALLY LONG TIME. Anyone remember the Hughes "Land Warrior" program? Wasn't that like 10 years ago?
No one loves the idea of powered exoskeletons more than I do, heck, I have worn our my Aliens DVD... but I can't take another optimistic article. I never, ever want to hear about this again until I see a solider demoing one at an air show... ok, maybe when fas.org has an article on models currently deployed. I'll settle for that.
(and I never want to hear about holographic memory until I can look for it on Pricewatch, either.)
I'd hate to be on the battlefield in one of these exoskeletons and need to do a big shit.
Hope diappers are included. !
I read this in the print version, and, when looking for a blurb on it online, was surprised to find that they have the entire bloody magazine online. The picture doesn't look as bad in print, naturally (though it's still not an attractive, futuristic exoskeleton by any means). As to Jeeps/helicopters, etc. being more efficient/cheaper, you must note that the reason for the development of these machines is for urban warfare specifically. Driving a Jeep down the hall may work in some video games, but it's not nearly as practical in real life.
Never thought I'd be using the word "practical" when referring to exoskeletons, but oh well...
BTW, ExoSquad was a sweet TV show.
... is this BBC article from over a year ago about the same.
My submission about it was rejected 2001/01/16. Geesh. News.
the pun is mightier than the sword
Am I the only one who remembers The Centurions?
Didn't they have some sort of exoskeleton that joined to them when they wanted to kick some ass? I seem to remember they had bikes and planes that attached themselves to their exoskeletons as well.
Poweeeerrr Xtttrrrrrreeeeemmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Still haven't got the geteit chemosit yet, glory be. Lord tegeus-Cromis was moby cool.
Anybody know what I'm talking about?
"I his bow, and spun and wove, likes you." Vere de Vere out of my mould's mouth dragged me of the voluntary apes.
"We had young guys from the Air Force who had never seen a computer; they were successfully loading bombs with this thing in 15 minutes," Pin says.
That scares the FUCK out of me. Why the fuck is someone part of our countrys high tech defense if they havent even used a computer? AND why The FUCK are they loading bombs?! Talk about a fucked up place and I live here.
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
More powerful than a locomotive
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!
Look up in the sky!
It's a bird!
It's a Plane!
No It's...
Cowboy Neal with his shiny new X0-147A Warfare Utility Supplement System (WUSS)
>
..and the next step will no doubt be Judge Dredd.
Better be a nice guy in when this comes along.
"There is no substitute for thinking" - Bjarne Stroustrup
Why dont they try that new muscle-plastic?
the one that expands/shrinks acording to the electric flow throw the plastic? i heard that it could be used for replacing damaged muscles. Now that could replace all of those unnesesary motors and pnaumatics in the exosekeletons.. the weight of the whole thing would be much smaller... but the energy source would still be a problem...
sorry i dont have the link for the sciense-article about the muscle-plastic..
These must be invented, or Ripley will not be able to protect herself and Newt from the Alien Queen when it sneaks aboard their starship. It *will* happen. It has been pre-ordained in film :)
While these exoskeletons look impressive and will add equally impressive capablities, they're not even in proto type yet. The suit pictured in the article is just a mockup to helpd figure out how to attach the servos and sensors. Even so, the military is definitely taking this whole concept very seriously. The suit pictured is intended as a general purpose infantry enhancement allowing a foot soldier to carry heavier weapons, more supplies, or a whole bunch of body armor. Note the "or". These suits are not the "Mobile Infantry" suits of Starship Troopers. For more info, I'd suggest going to www.darpa.gov and entering "exoskeleton" into their search box. Lot's of neat projects and white papers there. They're also working on a back pack helicopter thing that looks totally cool.
I an a war, a tank is very effective in house to house combat. In World War II the GI's used them to shoot holes in the walls of houses as they moved forward so the GI's could:
Take cover there
Used them as jumping points to advance
Clear out the enemy in the house/cellar
The German's even used them against Allied ships as they neared the beaches. The tank, next to the helicopter, is one of the most revolutionary inventions in warfare's history.
I can't speak for some, but we could sure use one of these at our National Guard unit. We're constantly having to get out the forklift to lift up a pallet of truck tires or the like.
in "The Wrong Trousers" Wallace was moved about in a NASA Legs Only design.
.... Stop Frame Animation from Nick Park,
Wallace And Grommet
who did Chicken Run.
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
sweet
does that mean the new weapon for muggers will be an EMP gun ?
Remember Ironman?
... he was a Marvel! :)
He flew, stabilised his heart, was resistant to gunfire
in his Iron-armour.....
I don't remember if he had Strength-augmentation,
but
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
coming to fruition. Cool.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
This is how the military works. The poor dumb f*s load the bombs while the techs, pilots, and other valuable people go in the bunker or run errands well out of range... 8-)
Seriously, just because someone isn't a hacker doesn't make him stupid. The USAF trains stupid guys as cooks or personnel clerks, not as bomb loaders. (This is why our records were always f*d up and we'd rather eat at the Navy mess hall if possible...) It's much safer to have someone used to manual labor doing the loading than some geek -- even if the AF managed to put some muscles on the geek. Manual laborers do develop a pretty good instinctive understanding of forces and balance; they can't calculate it, but they do know how far they can lean over while holding a 100 pound bomb. And if the bomb is big enough that manual lifting isn't going to do, then (at present) you've got these same guys driving forklifts or something. It's much safer to have them running a rig that amplifies their muscle power so they can use their experience in hand-loading, than running a fork truck with a half-dozen control levers that do _not_ work intuitively.
...And I always thought it was by Stop-Motion!
OTT- Did you know that the actor who played Gort in "The Day the Earth Stopped Still"
was actually too weak to lift the mother near the end of the movie, and she was
supported by wires (or some other effect)?
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
---- yeah, but he's disguised as a Chicken!
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
Finally be able to go into combat armed with BFG 5000's! WOOT!
Assuming some nation is capable of incapacitating the GPS satellites (or enough of them to make readings innacurate) and the US method of war will quickly bog-down.
Without GPS you can't fire a single Cruise Missile.
Without GPS you'll find it hard to find your bombing targets / intercept enemy fighters.
Take GPS from the picture and US-style "warfare" is a very different proposition. Not nearly so clinical, much messier (read : vietnam levels of "collateral damage")
In the article, they have pictures of an arm used for loading big stinking bombs onto planes that simply mimics the user's limb motions, and uses force-feedback so that the user can feel the weight of the bomb through the interface. So that one, at least, we have already done.
Has anyone thought about the NON military applications of this yet? For the record, I know what I am about suggest is years and millions of dollars of research away from fruition but the impetus of idea, inovation, or invention is a flight of fancy so bear with me for the moment. Medical: If you can combine exoskeleton technology with some of the recent robotics coming out of Japan(ie. that man shaped robot that can go up stairs, and down manholes, but I can't remember the name) and you have something interesting. Put a formerly crippled person in the suit and they can get around ALMOST normally. Even in cases were the limbs are functional, there are times when the person may lack the strength or balance to move about freely. Imagine taking a person so atrophied by disease that they can't move and giving them a suit that takes their feeble limbs and gives them freedom again. Industry: Someone already mentioned replacing forklifts and such. It seemed to work well in Aliens so I won't dwell on that point. SAR: Picture this; you're trapped in a burning car. The paramedics run up and asses the situation. Instead of calling for special tools to cut you free, one of them just opens the car like a soda can. Imagine being in a burning building. The heat alone is stifling, the roar deafining, the smoke choking you. Now think about the firefighters you charge into those buildings just to pull you out. Now think about that same firefigther, wrapped in in an exoskeleton, with the inhuman strength to move anything in his way, and the only thing on his mind is to come and get you out. Don't get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for the military. They also tend to have really nice equipment(toys) But I think that we have ignored other possible uses for this technology.
Fight Spammers!
Why do you need to know how to use a computer to load a bomb on an F-15? Computers aren't used for that.
Bigger issue than the power source. After all, you can strap a 500hp V8 and a big petrol tank to someone's back.
Perfect target for a heat seeking missile.
HTH HAND etc.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I am putting this idea out for two reasons - to get people thinking, and also to act as a sort of "prior art" for patent reasons (not really sure it would count, though).
Ok, so they are wondering how to power this thing, while keeping it small, right? Well, that little Sarcos blurb got me thinking:
Sarcos's suit will incorporate a separate, hydrogen- or petroleum-fired piston at every joint, an approach that aims to avoid the losses that plague distributed-power systems.
...and here is what I came up with:
You know those pneumatic contraction muscles that exist out there (I think there is also a hydraulic version as well)? They use something akin to a mesh, sorta like a "chinese handcuffs" weave, and a bladder inside that when filled with air (or hydraulic fluid), causes the weave to shorten, contracting the muscle - let me see if I can find a link... Ah, here we are:
McKibben Artificial Muscles
Notice the simple construction (hell, it is a construction article!) - some flexible tubing, braided sheathing, and a little simple work, and you can build these yourself!
Ok - now for the unique part (or, at least I think it is unique - I may be wrong, my idea may already be patented or something - I haven't checked - if you know, post here!):
These things use pumps, right? They need something to expand the bladder. Well, typically pneumatic or hydraulic pressure is used - which is all fine and well, except for an exoskeleton app, that power supply tends to be huge. So, let's shrink it!
Instead of generating pressure using a motor power ed compressor - why not generate it using an engine?! How, you may ask? Look at this:
Pulse Two - Performance of a Hydraulic Free Piston Engine
These engines have been around for a while - I have an old Popular Mechanics from 1950 that shows one on the front cover in the use of driving a large freight truck. Essentially, instead of using explosions to drive pistons that turn crankshafts and gears - the movement of the pistons is harnessed directly to pump a working fluid - in most cases hydraulic fluid, I would imagine air could be pumped as well.
Such a power plant could be built small and relatively light weight (I would say lighter in weight and as powerful as a backpack leaf blower engine). Lines could be ran from the engine to the air or hydraulic muscles at the joints.
Now, you may say - why not use regular hydraulic/pneumatic cylinders instead of these "muscles"? This seems to be Sarco's approach, as far as I can tell. Maybe, maybe not. Glad you asked. I wanted to present another power alternative...
Remember that engine - what are we doing: Exploding a fuel in a container causing it to expand greatly, producing power. That power is transmitted in some way to where it is needed - in conventional machines via gears and shafts, in our recently designed exoskeleton via hydraulic/pneumatic lines. But what if you used that exploding gas to drive the muscles? You could hook the lines directly to the combustion chamber, and route the gasses to the muscles - but think outside the box...
Run the fuel lines to the muscles - add an injector at one end, a spark plug at the other, and some kind of exhaust valve system. Make the muscle out of some braided titanium or something (the bladder was just there to keep the working fluid in one place - it isn't a needed device for these muscles - it is the braid that when it expands radially, it contracts laterally) to resist the heat of the explosions. Use a PWM format to "pulse" the explosions in the muscle to vary its "strength". Add some kind of heat dumping system to keep it from overheating.
At that point, the muscles ARE the power source, and the backpack contains control electronics and the fuel tank, etc - ignition coils and such could be built into the spark plug assembly, and the thing becomes a complete fuel/electric machine.
Does any of this sound "do-able"? Does it seem sound reasoning? Is anybody researching this direction? Would anybody be willing to give me a grant to try this out? Sarcos, want to hire me?
Seriously - other than the titanium braid, most of this could be easily fabricated in a home shop! Stick with steel braid and an external combustion chamber, and you could easily do this in a home shop! Maybe I SHOULD DO IT? What do you think? Hmmm...???
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
there is a risk of breakage of the spring of about 5% after 100 hours use. This percentage rises when the equipment is used longer. This data result from an evaluation of the current sold PowerSkips and can change with higher experience. In consequence, it has to be stated that the spring is a life limited part. With the current technology it is not possible to design and manufacture this part for a guaranteed durable use.
When they say break, I'm guessing they mean what we called "catastrophic failure" back in my ME undergraduate days. Imagine how much it would hurt if you landed a big jump and the spring snapped!
I don't recall where I read about it (Popular Mechanics at a doctor's office ages ago, I think) but I read an article on a man who was developing an exoskeleton using bungee cords. It was particularly good at leaping like a kangaroo. Not sure what progress has been made since then, but the idea was basically to use and conserve the body's motion through the exo, meaning that external power sources weren't necessary. As I recall, there was a lot of pully stuff going on for power amplification. Anybody know any more about this?
What is your Slash Rating?
Rocking book. Its pretty much about fighters using remote controlled robots (soldierboys). of course, they are not in the damn thing (talk about an advantage). Still kinda of the same thing. If you have not read the book, I would highly recommend it (along with its predecessor, "Forever War", which has no relation to "Forever Peace" but still is even better).
Back in the middle 60s there was a big push to develop exoskeletons. Popular Science had a whole issue on the subject. There were tests of an "elephant" exoskeleton. Talk of Giant, 20 to 40 feet tall, exoskeletons. Pictures of centaur trucks.
In concept, none of this is new. What is news worthy is why the work done in the '60s failed and why the work done in the '90s and '00s is working. Fourtty years ago there were no cheap fast computers. There were no ultrastrong ultralight composite materials. Fourty years of technilogical advance was need to get from the first failed attempt to a where their is chance this will work
Stonewolf
screw Viagra....
a nuclear powered ekto kock....
let all you geeks give your mate what I have been giving my wife for years!
There are many things in our world that were once merely imaginings of creative minds. In order for these dreams to become realities people need to become excited about them. This will lead to young scientists inventing these nonexistant technologies that the futures devices require. Therefore it really doesnt matter if the realities of such projects are six months away or six decades, tech grows very quickly in recent history, and we need fresh, and enthused minds to help keep the pace going. Bio-feedback tech, space-travel and a hydrogen economy? If enough people focus their energies, certainly. Our main concern should be making certain that these new technologies are used ethically, and efficiantly. Get out there and invent people. Ill try and do my part, and you do yours.