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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."
Great now we have even more power over our "foes". Can't we find a better use.
Run..Its cyborg godzilla!!
Carpe meam simiam!
--Chag
--Chag
"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.
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).
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
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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?
This is hardly a new thing. If a jumbo jet's computers crash, you die. All sorts of bad things would happen if hospital equipment's computers went out. Even your car's computer crashing while doing 90 on the freeway could be deadly.
Embedded systems need to *not crash*, period. The industry has been dealing with this sort of requirement for decades, and doing a pretty good job of it, all things considered.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
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!)
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?