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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."
That's going to make their already weak muscles weaker.Muscles grow on consisten application of resistance....
Many elderly have the money, why not get the Ultimate "Get Off My Grass" Mecha?
I know that if this would actually work, plenty of teams would pay a million dollars per unit for them. Who wants to give me a prototype to test out?
Can anyone see anything other than cost per suit preventing this being used as an aid for modern soldiers
No, 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 - By copying and pasting from old slashdot stories.
It's something that can really make or break a battle.
I can see this as fallout (no pun intended) from WWII really. The US had a baby boom; Japan had to cope with assimilating, through occupation, a new culture. A culture that was somewhat incompatible with their social norms. Now birth rates are falling because what is left of their old culture in their personalities and sensibilities is grinding against their new culture's pace and density. Raising a family is "lame", so nobody is doing it. All this, of course, is gross over-generalization; take it with a giant grain of salt.
If you ask my opinion though, now is the perfect time to start your own Japanese empire.
- Move to Japan
- Have like 12 kids
- Wait a couple generations
- ...
- Profit! (genetically speaking)
Just make sure to save a couple of kids to care for you when you are old and infirm. I seriously doubt this robo-suit thing will pan out.---k--
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I don't trust old people with driving none-the-less built in computer suit.
I think there other issues such as what happens if they have a medical condition (or otherwise) that could lead them to strike out at others? Arm then you give them a warrant to do anything -- provided you don't stop them as soon as they start doing things they shouldn't.
Obviously this could happen regardless of age but can be more common as our bodies break down (i.e. where being elderly comes in). The theory seems sound until you realize the implications of putting such a system in place in practice.
Now that I think about it, the "armor" could also be controlled by someone else should certain unfavourable conditions be met. This could actually be a very good idea, just don't let control get into the wrong hands.
maybe athletes can finally cut back on the steriods. i can see these kinda things becoming mainstream, at least in certain jobs. ups could raise the max weight on packages. moving to a new house would become much easier, you could just rent a few of these for you and u'r friends (no drunken battlebots plz). of course the military industry will be all over this. if enough ppl had it, other products would prolly change too. portable computers wouldn't need to be as lite. the human scale that you design around would change. you wouldn't be limited to things that can only be done under normal human strength. of course the scary part is, where to draw the line. each generation of these will be faster and quicker. evolution at a breakneck speed. and the disparity between rich and poor would be even greater. rich and powerful will have a whole new meaning. and as soon as these get wired to the brain for better reaction times and possible brain enhancements, we've become the borg. maybe i'm just overthinking this and should go back to sleep, but the ramifications r interesting. i can't wait to get mine and OC it!