DIY 18-ft.-High Robotic Exoskeleton

Hacx sends along a piece from PopSci that begins "Carlos Owens had handled all kinds of machines as an army mechanic, but he always dreamed of using those skills for one project: his own 'mecha,' a giant metal robot that could mirror the movements of its human pilot. Owens, 31, began building an 18-foot-tall, one-ton prototype at his home in Wasilla, Alaska, in 2004. Working without blueprints, he first built a full-scale model out of wood. Moving on to steel, he had to devise a hydraulics system that would provide precisely the right leverage and range of movement. He settled on a complex network of cables and hydraulic cylinders that can make the mecha raise its arms, bend its knees, and even do a sit-up. ... He foresees mechas having uses in the military and the construction industry, but acknowledges that right now they're best suited to entertainment. The first application he has in mind: mecha-vs.-mecha battles, demolition-derby style."

Comments

Damnit, that looks awesome. I want a video of it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It only cost him $25,000? That's amazing.

Too big.

[onion2k]

The whole idea of mecha robots is plain wrong. It's not necessary to make an exoskeleton that big. In a military (or 'gaming') situation it'd just present a bigger target. All you need is a minimal amount of armour with enough power to augment picking up large amounts of weight, and possibly some system to dampen recoil if you're holding a projectile weapon.

(Oh dear. I'm actually arguing that mecha robots are a poor weapons system design on the internet. Is this what my life has become? Maybe I should go outside?)

Re:Too big.

[Renraku]

They are actually a poor system.

You don't get decent speed or armor, you don't get awesome firepower like a 120mm cannon.

Basically, powered exoskeletons are not strong enough to withstand an RPG attack, aren't fast enough to dodge them, and aren't armed enough to deal with anything beyond a few AK-47 wielders.

How do we fix it? Easy. Make them pretty much immune to small arms fire. Make them faster. Adopt tactics to cover each other. Implement scanners and other intelligence devices so you know where the enemy is coming from and maybe where those IEDs are hidden.

On mecha, and exoskeletons

[Anonymous Coward]

People are approaching the idea of mecha ass-first.

These proposed engineers of mayhem mostly treat "BIG FUCKING ROBOT OH YEAH" as an end in itself. In any semi-realistic context mecha should be seen as something that naturally evolves into being as agile, versatile exoskeletons are made progressively more powerful; you have to work up to big with a design where everything else works superbly, you can't work from big down. Otherwise any advantage gained by size will be hugely offset by the sad fact that the thing moves like a turtle in molasses.

Mecha become reasonable when they can move and maneuver with the same agility as a human being -- think Eva, which can run, dodge and so on with considerable finesse. (Here's waiting for those carbon nanotube aerogel artificial muscles, by the way.) But since we can't even do that for a human-sized exoskeleton, any effort to build a mecha that's not severely dysfunctional is going to be impotent.

Re:On mecha, and exoskeletons

[camperdave]

There's a reason why there are no one-tonne bipeds in nature, and no ten-tonne land animals altogether.

There used to be plenty.

Re:Damnit, that looks awesome. I want a video of i

[jgtg32a]

True, but that may have just been the author of the article saying that he designed and built it from scratch, he wasn't following any plans that someone else made

Re:Aliens!

[PitaBred]

Concrete roads don't exist where the military often wants to be. That's why tanks were developed. Get something that goes over terrain better than a tank, and you would have a great defense contract.