Raytheon Exoskeleton Brings "Iron Man" to Life

An anonymous reader writes "Raytheon is bringing 'Iron Man' to life, according to EETimes. 'The movie opens in theaters worldwide today, but the real "iron man" has already been under construction at Raytheon Company (Salt Lake City, Utah) since 2000. Raytheon's Exoskeleton project is the brainchild of project leader Stephen Jacobsen and is being funded by the U.S. Army. The project, according to the company, permits soldiers to don an Exoskeleton suit that amplifies their strength — enabling them to lift 200-pound payloads without tiring.'"

Comments

Re:Favorite part of the story

[B3ryllium]

"navigating rough terrain" is clearly a coded phrase meaning "flying around being badass and blowing shit up"

Alien

[Bryansix]

That's from Alien. Now if the suit allowed the soldier to fly then it'd be from Iron Man.

Re:Raytheon

[spun]

is but ONE of many who develop such stuff.
The exo-skeleton concept has been around for
MANY years, just grab an old copy of Popular
Science from the 1960's. The subject was
"Man Amplifiers". Nothing to see here. Yeah, old news. I see that same subject of "Man Amplifiers" in my email every day.

no but they did hire Halle Berry

[commodoresloat]

for a topless sunbathing scene

Oh yea - just what I was picturing.

[nilbog]

Yea, those look exactly the same.

It's like saying we already have jetpacks then pointing at a trampoline.

Re:I Saw It

[AuMatar]

Umm, the movie is about a man who makes weapon systems, and finds out they're being horribly misused. He then stops selling them, at a huge loss to his personal wealth. Not exactly fascist propaganda there.

Re:I Saw It

[TooMuchToDo]

Wow, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

I can go see a film purely for the CGI aspects. I don't always want deep meaning attached. Iron man is chalk full of western culture....because it's a western film. Also, yes, I think certain pieces of military hardware are cool (i.e. the SR-71 blackbird, the Global Hawk UAV, etc) from an engineering standpoint. So what? Hell, even weapon systems are cool when they're used properly in a movie (i.e. the Death Star was a weapons system mind you). If you're looking for something deeply meaningful, perhaps going to the movies isn't your best choice of venue.

Re:I Saw It

[Cal Paterson]

Unadulterated fascist, racist propaganda of the lowest intent - with crypto-homoeroticism as the cincher. In other words: more American "culture".

You are hilariously overreacting. I saw the film yesterday evening (in the UK), and it's not exactly high art, but it's a slightly above average CGI Blockbuster; the CGI is good and there are reasonable spots of humour around the place. There are certainly some low points; Iron Man saving the defenceless Afghans from each other was pretty questionable (and I mean in a moral sense, not in some theatrical way).

I disliked V for Vendetta, because that truly was an film which took serious liberties with the source material (to the point where the original author declined to be credited). It misrepresented the plot to make it appeal to fools like you; the kind of fools that see homo-eroticism in a superhero story and aren't aware of the really sinister films; the ones that pander to the American anti-American (and I say this as a British person). I mean the kind of tiresome American who thinks that the two solutions to the current bad president are revolution or magical panacea of the democratic party. I'm sure some of the latter persuasion think they're both the same thing.

Keep on fighting the man, man!