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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."
Wasila, Alaska? The killer app for this device is to put a set of high-heels on it and have it run as the GOP Veep candidate in 2012 - all puny mortals bow down before Mecha Palin, or be crushed!
Only the Obamabot can save us!
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?)
http://twitter.com/onion2k
This seems really familiar.
I'm pretty sure this is the same mech a couple of years back. He's probably mad a little progress since then.
There have been some military projects, but the problem is that anything which can lift over a tonne one-handed requires a power supply too big to attach to the suit itself.
How do you kill that which has no life?
In Here there's a video of an experimental Raytheon exoskeleton for the US army. It seems that we're a long way from seeing something like "starship troopers" especially because there's a conspicous umbilical cord in the Video, probably for the external power source and computer controls. While Moore's law can cope with computing requirements, there's nothing similar in power production, and especially in power density.
Novody would want a battery powered exoskeleton with a 10 minutes charge.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
They're called Fork Lift trucks. In reality, Mechs/walkers are never a good solution. Hard to balance and inefficient. In Mecha anime/manga they usually make up some pseudosience as to why they're using walkers and not tanks and planes.
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.
Here's a really short video of it in action
Here's the designer talking about it
And here's his website (under construction, but with some technical info)
Why lie when you can just make up stuff and claim it to be true?
It has red eyes! It means it's a decepticon! RUN FOR YOU LIVES!!!!!!!!!
If he hasn't built in any restrictions I predict a posthumous Darwin Award the moment the guy tries to absently scratch his nuts :-)
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He's probably mad a little progress since then.
Absolutely. He used to be a raving lunatic.
Another few years and he should be quite sane.
(ps: use commas, your sentences are hard to read)
May contain traces of nut.
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