Slashdot Mirror
First Military Exoskeleton Reaches Prototype
JonathanGCohen writes "The U.S. Military has created the first ever prototype for an exoskeleton to be worn by soldiers capable of making its 100 pound weight and a 70 pound supply package feel like five pounds." From the article: "Bleex 1 consists of a pair of hydraulically powered leg braces, more than 40 electronic sensors, a control computer, and an internal-combustion engine providing power from an attached backpack. The plastic and carbon-fiber braces are affixed rigidly to the soldier through a customized pair of standard Army boots, with more compliant and giving connections at the chest and waist. These looser connections prevent blisters and abrasions."
This is not news.
It's been done before, and it's been done better.
^_^
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Which would you rather do: Carry 70 pounds throughout your journey, or carry 5 pounds for the first 15 minutes and then well over a hundred for the rest?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
the newer version will allow soldiers ... wearing it to move faster than 6 feet per second.
thus actually enabling a real version of "The Wrong Trousers"
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Here is Lieutenant Ripley testing the device.
Trolling is a art,
I am fairly sure the machine design aritcal that your link references is several months old.
Here is another link:
http://bleex.me.berkeley.edu/bleex.htm
Perhaps this can be adapted to civilian use to enable the traditional "groom carrying the bride over the threshold" maneuver that is becoming increasingly more difficult in the US.
I suspect the biggest obstacle to comfortably using exoskeletons is responsiveness. If you want to move your hand, you just think about it and it takes a few milliseconds to move. With an exoskeleton, you have to hit the sensors (perhaps past their critical point), and the hydraulics/whatever has to kick in and move it. How long does that take?
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Bleex 1 consists of a pair of hydraulically powered leg braces, more than 40 electronic sensors, a control computer, and an internal-combustion engine providing power from an attached backpack.
that's great, but can it find Sarah Connor?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
TFA says, and I quote "Carrying a quart of military standard JP-4 gas". Now as a member of the US military, I will not wear this. JP-4 has a very low flash point and is very unstable, not to mention it is a JET FUEL, one spark and you would be toasted. A better alternative would be JP-8, which while still jet fuel, you can throw a match into and nothing will happen since it's flash point is extremely high. Either way I personally don't want to have a quart of jet fuel on me the next time I go to the desert...just sounds like bad news to me.
I think this is the link we want http://machinedesign.com/asp/viewSelectedArticle.a sp?strArticleId=59627&strSite=MDSite&catId=2
If the wearer/opeartor falls down, can they stand up again unassisted?
I get a picture of beached whales or insects on their backs.
Not trolling, I really want to know!
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
It would really suck to be wearing one of these things when an EMP bomb goes off over the battlefield. I'm sure 170 pounds is not going to feel like 5 pounds after the electronics shuts down.
The story linked to above is a summary of this article:
a sp?strArticleId=59627&strSite=MDSite&catId=2
Giving soldiers a high-tech leg up
http://machinedesign.com/asp/viewSelectedArticle.
This is far cry from something useful. Soldiers do a lot more than walking. What about running, diving, low crawling to some cover, then firing from a crouched postion?
Imagine the chicks you could pick up wearing one of these babies :-)
Yeah, but then you have to deal with them yelling "Put me down, put me down!"
As you might recall, the Japanese beat Professor Kaz's team to it, although the application the Japanese one is aimed at is different:
The Sexy Japanese Version
BTW isn't having a gas engine bad because of the noise it might make?
I really recommend reading Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman. It explores some of the issues (many of them moral) that come about when one nation can make war on another nation with no risk to its own men (through the use of robotic suits that have eventually had the humans taken all the way out). We're definitely headed that way...
It's a fabulous book - from the same guy who wrote Forever War, but it's not a series or anything.
Anyway, here's a question to toss out:
If one man can cause pain to another man with no risk to himself, then it's basically torture.
If a group of men can do it to a different group of men, what is it?
--LWM
Meanwhile, the US military recently launched a study into why so many soldiers and Marines were suffering back injuries (both during and post-deployment). Extreme equipment weights are cited as primary factors. So, technologies like this could really help.
During development, an operator donned Bleex 1, which weighed about 100 lb, along with a backpack carrying a 70-lb load. He could walk at about two steps per second (or 6 fps) and it felt like he was only lugging a 5-lb load. The first prototype was restricted to walking on flat terrain and not-too-steep hills, but the wearer could also squat, bend, and swing from side to side, as well as step over obstacles. The suit is water resistant and will float, according to its inventors.
Now at last I realize why I have been playing so many futuristic soldiers in games that can carry sixteens different heavy weapons weighing hundreds of pounds, but cannot jump over a three-foot tall wall. They all had the Bleex.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
After watching those videos at the UC Berkeley site I wonder how practical this thing is. -Very loud gas engine (dangerous too with the jet fuel) -Seems very awkward and unatural for the person wearing it. Why not just work on robots that will carry heavy things? The fact that the apparatus weighs so much in comparison to what it allows you to carry also seems ridicules.
You're kidding, right?
The only force coming out of the springs would be the force you used to compress them. So instead of using that force to just carry the damn load directly, you're using that force to compress the springs to carry the load. Add to that the force needed to carry the springs themselves, and the force lost through entropy, and you've got the stupidest powered exoskeleton idea I've heard all day.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
"Help. I've fallen and I can't get up!"
This exoskeleton sucks for defending and going after people in cities, close alleys.
It would be good if they figured out how to enclose a soldier in plated armor strong enough to withstand a IED (although that maight be a lot of armor).
The main benefits of that would be that even though you are slow you can take a punishment and still be able to get into alleys, buildings, and other places a M1Abrahms can't get into.
Then again... It would be more logical to send in a remote controlled robot with a machine gun on it.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Wouldn't it be funny if it had an unmuffled 2-stroke engine?
Whiinnnnnnngggg-ding-ding-ding...
"If a group of men can do it to a different group of men, what is it?"
Congress.
A term has already been coined for this kind of armored exoskeleton system:
MechWarrior.
I saw this and being in the military, I had some questions. First about the article:
philoneist is very sketchy about this article and points to machinedesign and DARPA. I goto machine design and the entire article is undated giving no clue as to how old this thing may actually be. Now I start digging, most articles outside of the ones that are referenced in /. are in the 2003-2004 timeframe. I had to really dig to find ANYTHING about bleex in DARPA. This does not seem to be breaking news based on what I was actually able to find.
Now some valid points about this program were raised. My big question is what happens if said soldier/sailor/airman/marine etc is carring near max load and this thing suffers a catastrophic failure... Some special forces can handle 100 pounds of gear, but 200 pounds, catastrophic failure... In a word, Yikes!
I think DARPA will be better off looking into the cooling systems and making things smaller rather than helping us carry bigger and more...
Of course, thats just my opinion, I could be wrong...
Robert A. Wukich, Sr FF/EMT-B Sgt/USMC
My opinions do not reflect that of the USMC, Armed Forces, DoD, or anyone other than myself!
Being in the military things like this make me laugh. Seriously it takes YEARS to even institute a simple change of uniform for everyone. Imagine how long it's going to take to get these ready for issue AND create new tactics for them. I would put a lose estimate around 2020 at the earlyest even if they get proper funding, which is unlikey.
Many of you are asking questions of "how will it perform in combat, can operators crouch/dive/roll/prepare a five course dinner/shoot/etc, and what happens when it runs out of gas?"
This is why we have the prototype stage when we build something.
When Goddard launched his first rockets, people didn't say "Yeah, but how're you going to get to the moon on that?"
You build, find the shortcomings of your design, improve, and test again.
The suit probably doesn't have any practical application now, but future versions in five - ten years might allow military mechanics to fix heavy vehicles quickly, and in 20 - 50 years, our soldiers might be able to carry better body armor into combat with less restrictions than the current body armor (which is heavy in its own right).
I like the idea that our soldiers who are being shot at will eventually be able to move faster, shoot more effectively, wear more protection, and be better equiped than their enemies.
Nah, Robert Heinlein had powered battle suits of some kind in "Starship Trooopers". They allowed, among other things, incredible leaping (though I forget the terminology he used.)
And I'd be surprised if he were the first to do so.
BTW, a MechWarrior Battletech Battlemech, or WTH ever it is called, also goes by another name: sitting duck. In physics as is currently known, penetrating missle-bombs are way, way ahead of armor. In fact, the only viable defense against them are anti-missle missles.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Royal Marines yomped all the way from San Carlos to Port Stanley with 110lb loads in their backpacks, and had to fight along the way...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Wish I had known about this before christmas. Now I'm stuck with these stupid sweaters .
Register the editry.
Got to love how any military product has to have a PR photo ready first, results later. Research in any other field doesn't need consumer-electronics-level designers quite so early in the project. Something about that gives me the willies.
I was watching a documentary on the race to build the next generation fighter jet, and time and time again, the main argument in favor of the X22 was that the other design looked weird.
Yeah, plan your multi-billion dollar expenses on the sexiness of the machine boys, not on the functionality. I too get "the willies" thinking that people this infantile are sitting with their finger on the metaphorical nuclear button.
You can't take the sky from me...
The only problem "the nature" has solved has been the problem of how to reverse a motion produced by one muscle. The solution is to pair a second muscle with the first, so that any muscular force exerted to close a joint can be reversed by a muscular force to open the joint, and vice versa.
Nature, having a much firmer grasp of thermodynamics than you do, has not bothered trying to solve the problem of a magical system that produces a power output greater than its power input.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
My question is why this exoskeleton? Why not some vehicle that can resist a blast from a roadside bomb?
If the military's research into new technologies for various applications had to stop because something else was also (or more) pressing, nothing would ever get done. Things like the internet we're using right now, GPS, and countless other defense initiatives overlapped in R&D and always will. Personally, I think exo-skeletons like this are most likely to be used, along with more armor, when a medic or other rescue guy needs to hop out of an armored vehicle and assist in moving a wounded 250-pound Marine into the shelter of the vehicle. Tasks like that are exactly hand-in-hand with other work done on bomb/mine-resistent personnel carriers and transport vehicles. A rescue squad is going to be a lot more likely to step out into sniper fire if they can handle their own substantial armor and carry a large, gear-laden soldier 50 yards into the clear. Also, this is how you get geeks to enlist.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
you know what's even worse than penetrating missle bombs?
Citrus juice.
You can incapacitate any foe by spritzing citrus juices into their eyes.
Your comment is very interesting and I'll have to go look for that book. However, I'd just like to point out that your question is not about the future, it is now.
Cruise missles, ICBMs and even just vastly superior artillery and aircraft make the "causing of pain to [other men] with no risk to [themselves]" a reality now.
Cruise missles were launched on Bagdad from ships in the Red Sea. That ship was not in any danger from the people it attacked. Even the stealth bombers that participated in the first attacks on Bagdad were not in any credible danger from Iraqi forces.
What is my point? Well, I'm not sure, execpt to point out that your question is immediate and requires thought now. We don't need to wait for robots to need the discussion.
An internal combustion engine? One thousand PSI of hot hydraulic fluid coursing through steel veins running throughout my lower torso and legs? And gasoline? On my back? While I'm being shot at? I'm game!
Berkely has some interesting videos of the exoskeleton in use
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
CATS/Diebold '08- All your vote are belong to us!
1)6 feet/sec is only about 4 mph. Not too fast.
I am all for the advancement of technology to aid our military. DARPA has a lot of goodies on their shelf that many of us would like to be completed.2)I can ruck with over 100 lbs on my back for a few hours. Days without even lugging JP-4 around.
3)Do I need to carry 200lbs and sound like a chainsaw? This just makes me more of a target.
4)The user can duck and squat, but if under enemy fire could he engage and overtake? Or fall prone, return fire, and *get back up*?
Years from now Bleex will be looked at as the grandfather of the giant robot mecha tanks we send our soldier to war. Full Metal Panic anyone?
Only a psyhco would put a nuclear powerplant in one of these. As it is the enemies duty to destroy these (things are just going to be blowing up all over the place in a battle) you put your own soldiers at extreme risk, not to mention the long term danger to the environment and civilians. Your own troops are not going to want be near them! Or did you mean cold fusion?
Regular underwear, long underwear, insulated shirt/pants, maybe another layer on top of that, overwhites, Bunny Boots, glove liners, Arctic Mittens, balaclava, goggles, etc. etc. Then there is skis/snowshoes/poles, Arctic canteens, and lots of gear. Then add to that a main and reserve chute if you're Airborne (like me), knife, weapons, ammo, cleaning kit, protective mask, maybe a radio and batteries, binos, rope, crampons, etc. etc.
I remember an old poster at one army post that had a pic of a guy carrying a fridge on his back, with the caption "Don't be an ass, leave it behind." I wish.
I'd like to see how this performs while climbing uphill over deadfalls in deep snow at -40 below zero.
30 percent of the carbon monoxide in northeastern U.S. comes from Alaska
I'm not convinced that an exoskeleton will enable a footsoldier to take on a tank of the same tech level.
A foot soldier can already take on a tank. http://www.defense-update.com/products/r/rpg.htm
Imagine a soldier carrying a ton of armour, yet able to move almost as quickly as a man, yet impervious to most weapons...
Well, based on other posts, it looks like armor ain't what it used to be. But imagine a soldier carrying a hornet's nest of anime-style swarming missiles. He'd be a like a mobile squad-level point defense station.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Forget the anti-armor missiles, a good hit in the upper portion of the thing would probably be enough to knock it down even if the round doesn't penetrate the armor. Once it's down, you could probably pick it apart pretty easily.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
So what, its got a pull-start? What about stealth? Terrorist 1: You hear something? Terrorist 2: Sounds like one hundred people mowing their lawns, nothing to worry about. TFA /.'ed, so if it meant some kind of fuel-cell business then whatever. The important thing is that I amuse myself.
Just as soon as the army finds some angsty 14 yr olds.
The article sounds an awful lot like it was lifted from this press release, dated March '04.
TFA is DoS'ed, so I have to ask... have there been new developments in the last couple years, or is this just a dupe from two years ago?
Indeed, that's an excellent reason why armored vehicles (like tanks) are no longer used in modern armies: a single hit into a vulnerable part can disable them. You don't use anything that is not completely, 100% perfect. Never mind that a single land-bound tank, while it lasts, can break through defenses that otherwise would be impenetrable. There simply would be no military value in a tank that can run, climb, jump - even if it has some limited flight capability. Just think of it, what if it gets destroyed while doing its job?
Keep my AC stalker bitching about the anime smiley. Yes!
Keep my AC stalker bitching about my first posts and the fact that I'm a supporter of Slashdot. Score!
Keep my AC stalker bitching about my occasional use of a search engine. Bonus!
Awesome! The GHB and peyote I left out for Santa on Christmas Eve really paid off!
^_^ ^_^ ^_^
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I was watching a documentary on the race to build the next generation fighter jet, and time and time again, the main argument in favor of the X22 was that the other design looked weird.
Yeah, plan your multi-billion dollar expenses on the sexiness of the machine boys, not on the functionality. I too get "the willies" thinking that people this infantile are sitting with their finger on the metaphorical nuclear button.
You don't suppose that rather than try to dig up classified information, or try to determine the objective criteria used in the decision(things like unrefueled range, weapons load, maintainability, cost, situation awareness aids, etc. ) that the producers took an easy out and said it won because, " Oooooh, its pretty and fast!" I find that notion easier to believe than the assertion that a major defense program providing the primary air superiority fighter for the Air Force, the F-22 would be decided primarily on aesthetics and that said selection would survive scrutiney by the Department of the Air Force, DOD, Congress, and the President. There are many philosophical positions that can impact programs like this, (purpose built vs general purpose, heavy vs light) but ugly vs pretty isn't really one of them. If it were, two of the most effective aircraft the US has built would never have seen the light of day: the F-117 Nighthawk stealth figher, and the A-10 Thunderbold II, AKA Warthog.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell