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Powered Exoskeleton Legs
dyoo78 writes "Berkeley Engineers have come up with an ingenious mechanism that almost mimics, well, Borg technology. Developed by UC Berkeley's Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory, the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (BLEEX) consists of mechanical metal leg braces that are connected rigidly to the user at the feet, and, in order to prevent abrasion, more compliantly elsewhere. The device includes a power unit and a backpack-like frame used to carry a large load. This development bring to the forefront the ability to not only carry large loads in wartime efforts, but may possibly help people with limited muscle ability to walk optimally."
Yeah, it only takes a slight bug in the software and this thing will break both your legs in a second.
Exoskeletons have been designed before, but no-one dared try them on for just this reason.
This is great -- it senses your motions and accomodates you, helping you along:
/. article a few months ago about a Japanese team of researchers who were working on the same sort of device (I don't recall the name, but I'm sure the dupe-hounds will point it out). But if I recall correctly, that system required control imput, such as from a joystick-like device. That limits the robusteness and usability pretty severely, IMHO.
The researchers point out that the human pilot does not need a joystick, button or special keyboard to "drive" the device. Rather, the machine is designed so that the pilot becomes an integral part of the exoskeleton, thus requiring no special training to use it. In the UC Berkeley experiments, the human pilot moved about a room wearing the 100-pound exoskeleton and a 70-pound backpack while feeling as if he were lugging a mere 5 pounds.
There was a
Interestingly, this thing runs on a gas engine (which powers hydraulics for the powered joints and provides electricity for the computer controls), and:
The current prototype allows a person to travel over flat terrain and slopes, but work on the exoskeleton is ongoing, with the focus turning to miniaturization of its components. The UC Berkeley engineers are also developing a quieter, more powerful engine, and a faster, more intelligent controller, that will enable the exoskeleton to carry loads up to 120 pounds within the next six months. In addition, the researchers are studying what it takes to enable pilots to run and jump with the exoskeleton legs.
I want my robot body now please. Price?
everything in moderation
I'm sure it wouldn't be too tricky to put physical or electrical limits on the exoskeleton to prevent it from moving into a position that the human body can't. I seriously doubt it'd be a big problem.
...to having technology seen only in science fiction stories happen right in front of our eyes.
This technology could easily make it possible for soldiers to carry very heavy armor that could possibly protect them from most all small arms fire and possibly even some heavy fire. All the while carrying heavy machine guns and small autoloading cannons that these days require crews to move and operate.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
- You have the leg strength to break your own leg and do so by resisting a machine movement.
- The machine is designed so that it can manouver so as to break a leg. The machine should have a physically limited range of motion which does not exceed the wearers!
So I would have no problem wearing an exoskeleton, if it was designed not to be able to break the human body inside, if it isn'tNever underestimate the dark side of the Source
All they have to do is make sure it can only move in the same directions and extents as a human. Once that's achieved, it can't possibly break your legs off. After all, it's enhancing existing human motions, not inventing new ones.
How is this better than a cart with wheels?
It looks cool, but it could probably break easilly and the battery life is probably worse than my laptop!
A simple mechanical solution:
They could put in some easily breakable
restraints.
so in case the exoskeleton goes malfunctions,
you could easily detacch your legs from it..
or the restraints would break off before
the force would be strong enough to damage your
legs.
The video clearly showed that the power pack this device currently
needs is so heavy that a guy wearing the skeleton+power pack looks
the way I do when I carry 30+ kilos and no exoskeleton! In other words,
he would be much better off if he left the exoskeleton+power back
behind, and carried on using natural power only.
As with a lot of other cool devices, the really big problem is the need
for compact, efficient, lightweight power sources.
They currently don't exist.
How do you figure one could quickly, easily and tracelessly hack a system whose only accessible inputs are things like pressure sensors?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Should social-justice advocates give up because the challenge is too great?
No. They should change their tactics because they're counter-productive.
And they should stop looking for causes to champion, and stop thinking that tactics that worked for civil rights will work for everything.
You know what would either kill or equalize gobalization? If the protestors would stop trying to riot around the WTO meetings, and start convincing the unions to act on the cause.
Mucho deserved props to Heinlein et al., but it's the "nobodies" in academic institutions (PhD's and don't forget those indentured servants, aka grad students) and the tinkerers in garages that really make the world go round. Heinlein gets the fame, but sorry, he shouldn't get the credit.
The side with that technology, thus cutting down considerably on the losses of your armed forces or the side that this technology would be used to defend against?
Personally, one would imagine that faced with the possibility of fighting such a foe that most governments would most likely reconsider any potentially hostile activity towards such an equipped government.
Of course, such is the march of human progress. One could argue forever that military forces and armed conflict do nothing but ill for all of humanity, yet at the same time someone else can point out the near endless series of side benefits that have been brought to humanity because of humanity's propensity towards killing eachother.
For instance, the computers that you and I are both sitting in front are the progeny of now 'ancient' military computer systems built during WWII. We may never have had RADAR systems developed if not for war. Same goes with rocket and jet engine technology...
Sure, war sucks. Sure, people die from armed conflict. However, without war, we would most assuredly not have the technology that we have today as artists, philosophers and pacifists aren't as prone to push forward the march of technology as much as those that have been put into desperate situations that need a radical new way of thinking to achieve a goal do.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Watch the video, and note the intense concentration on that guy's face! Walking around in those legs is obviously not easy. At some points it looks like he is losing his balance, or at least he feels like he's losing his balance, because he puts his arms out.
They obviously still have a lot of work to do...
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
I don't think this, or anything else, will lead to actual Mechwarrior-type vehicles. Biped robots make for great movies, video games and comic books, but the design is inherently flawed and inefficient. The facts that it took this long to produce a working prototype proves that it's a very tricky thing to do. In comparisin, wheeled vehicles are much easier to design and produce. This means that for every Mechwarrior on the battle field, you could probably have a hundred tanks. Also - a biped robot would have mobility and stability problems. They would be top-heavy, and be prone to tripping (either accidentally or through enemy efforts), and once they fell over, they would be sitting ducks.
I agree with you about the basketball thing through. Kind of like the basketball game in 'Flubber'!
*chuckle*
Don't forget, strength doesn't negate inertia.
You can go splat insided an exoskeleton just as nicely as you can outside one.
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
I've only managed to download the first two videos so maybe it shows in the third, but I wonder if this thing can let the "pilot" stand still with the 100lb bag on his back. You can see the kid kinda throwing his hands out for balance once in a while. For some reason I imagine standing still and balancing the weight would be a lot harder for the machine to interpret and more difficult for the kid to balance than the walking.
Moderation: +1 pwnage
An exoskeleton is one thing but 30+ ton mech's are impractical because:
1 Legs are more complex and therefore higher maintenence.
2 Walking tanks can't go hull down as easy, so they're better targets
3 Legs are slower than wheels or treads unless you have myomer muscles. (and we don't)
4 Legs mean you have a much higher centre of gravity. (recoil, impacts, etc.)
5 Legs can't support the same armor or equipment loads
6 Feet with that much weight on them would tend to punch through stuff from the impact of stepping, and therefore trip you up. (stuff like bridges, roads with sewers, or even just weak ground)
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
> This technology could easily make it possible for
> soldiers to carry very heavy armor that could
> possibly protect them from most all small arms
> fire and possibly even some heavy fire.
Due to the high-quality body armor already used in the US army and due to the use of armored troop transports, the main source of direct-fire casualties in Iraq has been from rocket-propelled grenades. These weapons can penetrate the armor on light troop transports, so any solution to protect infantrymen from RPGs would require such heavy armor that the result would be like making each man his own light tank.
The technology isn't even close to being there for that transformation, and neither would it be useful. The military can already pound the enemy into paste with nigh-invulnerable tanks, but restoring order afterwards requires interacting with the people, something that is hardly more possible in a mech than in a tank.