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New HAL Exoskeleton: A Brain-Controlled Full Body Suit To Be Used In Fukushima
An anonymous reader writes "Cyberdyne announced today an improved version of the HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) robotic exoskeleton at the Japan Robot Show. From the article: 'he latest version of the HAL has remained brain-controlled but evolved to a full body robot suit that protects against heavy radiation without feeling the weight of the suit. Eventually it could be used by workers dismantling the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant."
I'm afraid I can't do that Dave.
Yeah, this will end well.
Here's your Mark 1 HEV suit Gordon
Why not put a well-shielded controller instead and have the people control it remotely from a safe location? Well, it is Japan, the land of the weird ideas.
I hope they solved the icing problem that plagued a certain other robotic exoskeleton.
Otherwise, HAL might freeze over.
Hopefully it could do both. Oh and of course, the AI model, preferably one such that it's CPU is a neural net processor; a learning computer.
1 step closer to star trek
How would you control it? Wireless would be a problem, as radiation tends to play bloody havoc with radio signals, and a cable, while possible, would offer a lot of technical challenges, reducing movement ability and whatnot. And radiation could still be a problem, you'd have to shield the cable as well, and of course make up an interface with feedback and precise control to move around. Do-able, but not easy.
Powersuit's are simply a lot easier and more versatile all around.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
That, I think, is a bit premature without an interface to Skynet and the Skynet itself. Also, I believe the correct term is "nural net".
The same way TEPCO controlled the third-party workers, who were told not to wear radiation badges -- via optical fiber from Tokyo, of course. As for versatile, yeah, humans are not only more versatile, they are also a lot cheaper. Why invest in capable robots at all?
I am not an expert on radiation by any means.... but... the head, legs and arms (and the crotch when walking) look awfully exposed to me. Or does white cloth reflect radiation?
Yes, I do know that nurses were aprons made of lead and are not fully encases in a lead lining but they are dealing with a small radiation source coming from a single spot. Anyone going into a reactor would be dealing with radiation coming from everywhere, constantly, for a long time. So the lead shield banging into your balls protects you, from radiation from the front, some of the time... WHOOT! Sign me up!
Oh and any radiation from the top, goes straight through the entire body. This is about as usefull as a bullet-proof vest, against a spear coming out of the ceiling.
If radiation were to come from only a single spot and didn't bounce around, you could simply use a lead sheet mounted on wheels between you and the radiation source and work faster and in greater comfort, since that is not an option apparently (surely someone tried this and discarded it as being the product of a deranged mind), I fail to see how what is essentially an expensive sieve is going to keep you safe.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Didn't we go over this already... like, in the 80s ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
WTF is a nural net?
For the same reasons that humanoid robots that can move exactly as human does not yet exist. The materials are too heavy yet to allow current tech servos to move a robot with the speed and accuracy needed to represent the whole range of human movement correctly. (and if it were, it would be several times more expensive)
This xenomorph fight is starting to tire me out.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
It can't do both. The radiation shielding claim is bullshit. Any protective gear will shield against alpha and beta radiation. This means that they are claiming special shielding against gamma and neutron radiation. A little physics here: a tenth thickness is the thickness of material needed to reduce the radiation flux by one tenth. For gamma radiation it is 2 inches of lead or 4 inches of steel. For neutron radiation it is 10 inches of water or 10 inches of polycarbonate.
There is no suit that a human can wear that can even provide a single tenth thickness for gamma or neutron radiation. It is simply too massive. Any type of shielding that you would wear would also likely make it take longer for you to do work, which would defeat the purpose. When people need to work in high radiation zones, temporary shielding is installed, the work is carefully planned to minimize the time, and radiation dose is constantly monitored (including positioning the workers body to minimize dose). Powered battlesuits aren't used, nor will they be.
Cyberdyne, HAL, Fukushima - what could possible go wrong?
Why does it have to be humanoid? I'm fine with any robot that can do the job.
An exoskeleton is essentially two things. A sensor suit that perceives human bodily motions, providing sensory feedback is the first. A mechanical framework which reproduces the actions and receives physical feedback, perhaps with amplified strength is the second.
With modern telepresence technology with physical and visual sensors and displays surpassing human abilities to perceive, and for the second thing planned to be operating in a radiological hazard likely to cause failure of the human providing data input, requiring that the first thing be physically located inside the second thing is an engineering failure.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It's much more efficient for catching tasty nuras than line and hook
Starship Troopers and the Mobile Infantry - here we come. Now all we need are better suits, pocket atomic hand-grenades, a one-world corporate-government, and an alien race to fight against.
Then we have a problem.
> radiation tends to play bloody havoc with radio signals
Could you provide more details about how that works? I'm surprised, because gamma radiation has a very different wavelength to radio signals, and alpha and beta particles are different things altogether.
Radio signals are used all the time in the relatively radiation-filled environment of outer space, too.
Fiber optic data cables don't require or benefit from radiation shielding. For heavy work you're dragging a power cable anyway, so why not embed a dozen 40Gbps strands in it? If you want to use wireless data to control the recon machine, this is not a problem either, as in the human-free zone inside a melted down nuclear reactor you are free to use transmitter power sufficient enough to overcome the noise. The noise in there is hellish but overcoming that problem is easier than finding radiation hardened humans.
We are going to be about this meltdown recovery business for 40 years at a price of over a hundred billion dollars. We would save a great deal of money by leveraging technology as best we can to cut the human healthcare costs. Using a human for 30 minutes in that hellhole costs a half million bucks if he dies quick after, and ten if he lingers. Japan is not Russia, which had hundreds of thousands of humans from vassal states to use up for a half day each to clean up their mess. Japan takes care of their people.
For Japan to gain some waldo magic from this would only be making the most of a bad situation. (A waldo is a machine operated remotely by a human. )
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Other than an operating nuclear reactor, neutron radiation is pretty rare. Which sill leaves you with the gammas, of course.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
The nice thing about an exoskeleton, is that it wears itself.
So even if it needs to be very heavy in order to protect against radiation, this is not a problem for the user, as they don't have to carry the weight.
Slipping shoelaces ?
You underestimate the ability of humans to compensate for the failings of their machines. Given a rapid enough feedback loop even a child can operate any machine beyond its design limits. We let children as young as three operate remote controlled aircraft, obviously with neither training nor experience. Some of them are even amazing at it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Fiber optic data cables don't require or benefit from radiation shielding.
Wouldn't fiber optic cables darken like regular glass does under radiation? It wouldn't be an instant effect, but over time enough radiation could be absorbed to create enough defects that will disable communication.
As long as the suit comes in five distinct models which can join up to become a single unit, I will be happy.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Why not put a well-shielded controller instead and have the people control it remotely from a safe location? Well, it is Japan, the land of the weird ideas.
And risk ruining a perfectly good robot?
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
The Japanese can militarize this technology by creating a Mobile Suit Gundam!
If you look at the images we got from robots inside the reactor building, and the amount of static on them because of the radiation, I think it's safe to say that there's some kind of negative influence, be it in the electronics or in the actual transmission.
You're right, putting a human inside of the robot is better. After all, he will be much more inclined to do anything possible to bring his personal enclosure back home safely than someone in a cozy office would for a remote controlled robot.
You would agree that the cables would still be cheaper than you?
It's a net made of nurv fibre, obviously.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
That's the radiation messing with the CCD, not the radio transmission.
...may benefit from this in the future.
Imagine a brilliant super genious in an excoskeleton walking amongst us. ...oh wait!
Seriously, this thing is armored already. Just needs a slot to attach Cortana.
The first thing that is wrong with this idea is that it is brain-controlled when the wearer is intended to be able-bodied. Only cripples need mind-controlled exoskeletons. The rest of us just need force feedback.
The even bigger problem, though, is that they claim they need humans because robots can't hack the environment, but what is the exoskeleton going to be? A robot. So now you'll have a human at health risk inside a robot which may fail. Does that make any sense? No it doesn't. Build more modular robots and use the fucking robots and when they fail you won't have risked a human. I thought Japan was supposed to be great at robots but so far all the evidence suggests that they're no better than the rest of us, and that schools and hobbyists are still on the leading edge.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
anytime Cyberdyne creates any sort of technology?
Next up, HAL able to walk and work independantly.
*2 years later*
The HAL Union Soldiers just occupied all of Japan yesterday and appear to be setting up manufacturing hubs... more at '11.
Now...radioactive cyberzombies.
"Cyberdyne"? Come on, someone's fuckin' with you.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
No signal:
IIRC, this is one of the key techs needed for mechwar. Add in an implanted cell phone and "Resistance Is Futile"
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
now that "Labors" will be put into production. Who else can stop a rampaging mecha ?
I believe that HAL was the creation of Aurthor C. Clarke, Stanley Kubrick had something to do with making a movie FROM the book.
Why not put a well-shielded controller instead and have the people control it remotely from a safe location? Well, it is Japan, the land of the weird ideas.
Remote controlled through a wire maybe.
But it couldnt be remote controlled through waves because radiation causes interference.
and they've gone wrong!
In practice it only needs to appear to provide protection, so that the worker will be more willing to enter areas with dangerous levels of radiation.
How does this protect the workers? Sure it may protect some parts of them from radiation, but its not a full body suit.. And why exactly do they need it?