Power Armor For the Elderly

aicrules writes "The question of how to care for the growing number of people in the upper age bracket has a new answer - assistive power armor for the elderly." From the article: "The sleek, high-tech get-up looks like a white suit of armor. It straps onto a person's arms, legs and back and is equipped with a computer, motors and sensors that detect electric nerve signals transmitted from the brain when a person tries to move his limbs. When the sensors detect the nerve signals, the computer starts up the relevant motors to assist the person's motions. Sankai says the suit, dubbed 'Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) 5,' can let a person who can barely do an 176-pound leg press handle 397 pounds."

Comments

Re:Is anyone else thinking super soldiers?

[bobbis.u]

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.

This story and video show that American soldiers are currently using body armour that can stop rifle rounds. Although it doesn't say so anywhere, the sniper rifle was almost certainly 7.62mm. Here are some pictures of the aftermath: image 1 image 2.

You are correct however that the armour is pretty heavy, but that is less of an issue for vehicle based soldiers rather than pure infantry.

However, the problem with this powered exo-skeleton is that just the act of adding more weight, even if it is "self supporting", makes the soldier slower and less mobile (because of extra inertia). They need to be able to react very quickly and be able to dive to the ground, and jump behind cover, etc. There is a very long way to go before projects like this would actually improve a soldiers chances of survival. A better short term prospect is to continue to improve body armour to make it lighter.