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Japan Displays Prototype Robot Suit
anaesthetica writes "A project at Tsukuba University has produced a battery-powered robot suit designed to aid the wearer in strength-related tasks, like lifting heavy objects. The suit also has the capability of propelling itself, which is potentially useful for helping the handicapped or elderly walk. The optimistic professor who lead the project stated, 'Humans may be able to mutate into supermen in the near future.'"
This optimistic inventor is not familiar with The Wrong Trousers.
I think I'll wait until they come out with the Ultraman power suit model.
If that guy can't pick up that small Japanese woman anyway, then that suite better do a lot of other stuff, too.
But since she's not that much of a payload, the pictures might as well be of a guy wearing a Stormtrooper costume doing deep knee bends.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I, for one, welcome our new geriatric and quadriplegic robot-suit overlords.
It works by enhancing muscle movements. You move a muscle a little, the exoskeleton translates that into a much larger movement. Handicapped people (paras, quads) do not have muscle control in their handicapped limbs, so this exoskeleton can't help them.
FTA:
The 15-kilogram (33-pound) battery-powered suit, code-named HAL-5, detects muscle movements through electrical-signal flows on the skin surface and then amplifies them. It can also move on its own accord, enabling it to help elderly or handicapped people walk, developers said.
Thanks for playing.
Make sure the inhibitor chip is well-protected.
Japan has seen a growing market for technology geared toward the elderly, who are making up an increasing chunk of the population as fewer younger Japanese choose to start families.
A government report last week showed that pensioners made up a record 19.5 percent of the country's population in 2004 and that the ratio will grow rapidly, surpassing 35 percent in 2050.
Did anyone else shudder at the image of senior citizens ambling down the street in robot suits? Just imagine the damage potential.
That sounded to me pretty much just like the kind of hardsuits that the Knight Sabers wore in Bubblegum Crisis. You'll know what I'm talking about if you've watched the anime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegum_Crisis
It demonstrably helps the wearer pick up women.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Now I can be stronger and look more like a dork at the same time! Woohoo! Booyah.
On a related note, check out the Japanese booth babes on the slide show.
(Just kidding honey, if you're reading this.)
But this isn't going to be intuitive enough for many tasks I think. What we need is something similar to the "power suit" in Aliens, but without having it so directly attached to the wearer of the suit. In other words, my muscular motions should be interpreted within microseconds and the suit responds accordingly. To me it would only feel natural if walking around in a 2-ton suit of metal parts felt exactly the same as walking around in 2-pounds worth of clothing.
I like the picture caption that says the robot suit will help you lift "heavy loads", while the picture shows the guy carrying a woman. I'm sure she will be thrilled to find herself described in such a way. ;)
...a whole new chapter in the jocks vs. nerds war.
Humans may be able to mutate into supermen in the near future
Ironicly, I just got Viagra Spam that used that exact same phrasing...
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
Unless it's tapping directly into their brains (which it isn't), those signals aren't getting transmitted to the point where handicapped people will be allowed to walk.
I suppose if you expanded the group of "handicapped" to include those suffering from polio and other diseases that result muscular dystrophy, then I can see this argued, but paraplegics and quadraplegics are not going to be helped, despite the claims of the article.
And I'll take -1 Offtopic again for saying so.
... when you put five of these together!!
"Derp de derp."
the combat environment is more complex and demanding than the loading dock and you won't find power-ups hidden behind every crate.
I see that there are no gloves for this suit. So... in theory, you have arms that can lift 800lbs, with hands and fingers that will tear off your body at ~500lbs (assuming it's fragile little thing like that guy).
Remind me again why you would want to be able to have superhuman strength when all it's going to do is cause you to smash a body part if not amputate yourself by accident.
He actually had the strength to lift an asian woman!
There is an easier way - divorce - the wife will keep the house and all the crap and you can just walk to your new pad...
Oh well, what the hell...
"How? The only things I can think of that help against such guerilla tactics are good armor and staying alert. Anyhow, who needs super strength when you have good ol' firepower?"
Which is exactly why and what for: to enable soldiers to carry more armour and dish out more firepower.
Don't think for a moment that military applications of super-strength will mean Superman-style punching villains in the face. It won't. Ever.
However a major topic throughough the last century has been the weight of ammo and equipment a soldier has to carry. It's a real issue. That's one of the reasons (among other factors) why we've moved to smaller calibres.
Put some powered armour on those soldiers and suddenly they can carry a lot more heavy weaponry and ammo.
Individual armour has also been discarded precisely because of weight considerations: you _could_ make a breastplate that could stop a rifle round, but it was impractically heavy.
Now think the other way around: if you have an armoured exo-skeleton, you can carry enough armour at least over the vital organs to stop even a 7.62mm round or shrapnel from hand grenades and pipe bombs. _And_ this time it's without a mobility penalty.
You've just made life harder for the enemy soldiers, because now they need to lug around bigger weaponry to take you out, which limits _their_ mobility.
But perhaps more importantly, and this is really what makes it a wet dream for the military is: enabling soldiers to carry more electronics and a sattellite connection. Giving at least one soldier per squad enough electronics to know exactly where the enemy is, what's happening, where is the squad needed, what should they avoid, etc, is something that can give a _huge_ advantage.
Nations have been defeated before because basically their chain of command didn't react fast enough. E.g., that's why large armies like those of France or Poland crumbled in the face of Blitzkrieg in WW2. They just weren't prepared to react at that speed.
Or the USSR in WW2 was massively handicapped by their lack of radios on their tanks.
Now picture giving each squad a direct link to their officers _all_ the time. Bidirectional. You can know _exactly_ what's happening at each point, in real time, and the soldiers can know exactly what's expected of them. You can instantly see when your troops are being pinned and flanked, and how, and you can tell them exactly how to counter it. Better yet they too can see a bigger picture and react in a more intelligent manner.
It's something that can really make or break a battle.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.