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Australian Army Invests in Electrical Shirts
Stony Stevenson writes "The Australian Defence Department has injected $4.4 million worth of funding to further Australia's national science agency's (the CSIRO) research into designing clothing which can be used as a self-recharging electrical source on the battlefield. The Defence Department is hoping the technology can be used to replace cumbersome disposable batteries that soldiers must carry on the battlefield. The Flexible Integrated Energy Device (FIED) will be used to store and provide energy over a continuous period of time. It can be charged by either vibration energy harvesting or through plugging into an electrical power point."
As long as it can keep beer cold.
Thats great, now they just need to give out a load of free pin ups pics so they can all get to work cranking up a good charge to power their gear.
This means that while it is perfectly possible in theory for soldiers to charge batteries by running around, they will have to exert that extra energy themselves. I doubt that any soldiers (already heavily laden with weapons, body-armour and other gear) will want to wear suit that requires more energy from you for movements than normal suits.
Are they going to look like Dynamo from the movie ''Running man''?
If not, I'm not interested.
Magazine 13 - We like to think its funny... sort of
...if [the extra exertion required to charge this shirt] is less than or equal to [the energy needed to haul around those batteries the shirt will be replacing], then it's a net win. In fact, even if the shirt requires more exertion, it might still be worth it not to have to worry, "Do I have my batteries with me today?" "Are my batteries charged?"
Just for those of you that may not be familiar with the term: Grunt
I thought our politicians only saw it fit to buy decommissioned US junk, such as 30 year-old helicopters, and the odd fleet of dud tanks and fighter jets. Perhaps this is Howard's idea of renewable resources. Personally, I'd rather just put the grunts put to work in a more economic - imagine how much clean energy we could produce if we took our soldiers from the bloodbaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lined them up in a big grid of treadmill generators. We could put a picture of Kylie Minogue in front of them, and maybe a picture of Bin Laden behind her. This would pretty much motivate the lot of them.
The extra weight of the clothing is offset by not having to carry the extra batteries. So it shouldn't place anymore weight on the troop. I know it's much more convenient for me to wear a loaded photographers vest than it is to carry the bag. Same weight, but the distribution of that weight on your shoulders feels much better at the end of the day.
My concerns are these.
What's this vest made of? If a trooper takes a bullet through the vest, what type of stuff from the vest is going to follow the bullet into the body?
If this shirt is meant to be worn under armor then what impact does the constraint of being sandwiched between the body and the armor have on the overall effectiveness of the shirt?
If the shirt is meant to be worn over the armor, is there any redundancy to the power generation when the shirt takes a hit? With batteries, the trooper could always ask a buddy for a spare battery. Asking for the shirt from your buddies back, in combat, would probably be looked on negatively.
...hoping the technology can be used to replace cumbersome disposable batteries that soldiers must carry on the battlefield. The Flexible Integrated Energy Device (FIED) will be used to store and provide energy over a continuous period of time. It can be charged by either vibration energy harvesting or through plugging into an electrical power point." Just curiousCome on... Flexible Rechargeable Integrated Energy Device is much better. I'd wear a fried shirt - wouldn't you?
Build some solar cells into their helmets.
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Sooner or later this kind of tech is going to result in a stilsuit. Hope so anyway, those things are just too cool not to be instantiated.
Seriously though, if we colonise mars, they will be more then interesting, they may well be essential.
Frank Herbert had way more right than people realise. Except for the spice thing, but if I have this right, in his original musings on the story, spice wasn't as important, and it was Stilgar, not Paul Atraides who was to be the major character.
But they have to run regardless of which system they have used. They are actually replacing heavy non-rechargable batteries, which may run out, with this new system, which probably weighs about the same, but provides much more reliable power.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
now the question will be "did my shirt get mixed in with the non-electrical laundry?"
and "will this thing shock me everytime it rains?"
If a soldier gets shot? What would typically be a bad flesh wound now has an electric battery system thrown in there as well...
Shock shirts: soldiers will _always_ obey their orders without any hesitation.
There you are, staring at me again.
That problem lessens itself if you've got both types of soldiers.
Having spent some time in the field wearing various uniforms, I have to say, the idea of wearing a bunch of plastic and metal fibers in the field doesn't sound very appealing. It sounds like a recipe for heat exhaustion.
Are other energy sources really so inconvenient that this is justifiable?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth