Iron Man-Like Exoskeleton Nears Production | Hacker News Reader

Iron Man-Like Exoskeleton Nears Production

technologyreview.com

73 pointsolalonde31 comments

5 years, 10 years... It's okay for me: whenever I see old people hobbling along as a I race past them to catch my train, I pray that exoskeletons hit the mass market before my legs stop working.

Although it’s hardly useful in an industrial setting, I rather like this unpowered exoskeleton built as a student project:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdPpWy_O09k

CYberdyne INC (Japan) has a very advanced Hybrid Assistive Limb project as well. It's not developed for military purposes but for helping the disabled and elderly in their daily tasks. They will begin production in 2012.

http://www.cyberdyne.jp/english/robotsuithal/index.html

Seriously? Cyberdyne?

Are they building a digital defense network called Skynet?

And their Hybrid Assistive Limb is called "HAL".

I would be surprised if they did not have some system named "Skynet".

Sarcos corporation has had high quality haptic feedback mechanisms for decades now.

http://www.sarcos.com/teleop_videos.html

Take a look at the "Large Dextrous Arm" video. The operator has an arm in a haptic-feedback harness, which means he is virtually feeling what it's like to have a giant-sized arm that can pick up an anvil like a coffee cup.

Sarcos corporation actually knows how to build a full-body haptic feedback harness. Build one of those into the center of gravity of a 50 foot tall hydraulically actuated mechanical body, and add mechanisms ensuring that the orientation of the harness homunculus is always the same as the orientation of the giant mech homunculus. Since the orientation of both the giant and harness forms are the same, the human pilot's inner ear can become the gyroscopic mechanism for the whole mechanism.

In other words, you'd have a Japanese style "Giant Robot" with scaled-up human-like coordination and agility. (There would be an expansion in time for movements, but a human pilot should be able to compensate.)

Real talk, geek-style:

Not really Iron Man's suit - it's more like Ripley's mechanical suit from Alien, used primarily to move heavy crates in a loading bay.

Get your references right, HN

I wonder what kind of fail-safes are built into these suits, if it goes haywire it could bend you into a pretzel.

Ha, that immediately started me thinking - what if you remove the human, and fill the space with 70kg of battery, and then hook the think up to a mirror suit back at base worn by a real human receiving force feedback - instant Robocop.

Except that RoboCop was an actual cyborg, i.e. human brain (and various other organic parts) inside a largely artificial body.

I think what you're describing is more along the lines of a drone, as used in the aerial sense (UAV:s).

Seems like these guys are way behind Lockheed which has an unhooked version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kat8I5UM_Vs&feature=relat....

Imagine how many keyboards you'd mash if you used this while hacking in your old age haha. There are so many great applications for this, I just hope humanity, like Tony Stark uses this for good.

I assume is has rocket boosters capable of sustained, high speed flight and reaching orbit :)

Looks closer to the Alien loader exoskeletons - still very cool.

Oh yes! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSrcMaid0mg (a fragment of the alien vs. powerloader fight)

It would be a shame if these would be only used for combat and war. Imagine how cool it would be for hard jobs like builders or miners. But I guess in war and combat is way more money than in those hard jobs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology

How does the exoskeleton prevent you from falling over when you pick up or hold a 500 lbs weight at arms length?

It seems like this would be a major factor when center of gravity shifts as it does not compensate for it.

The exoskeleton is supposed to follow your movements, so you'll shift your center of gravity in the same way you normally pick up a 50 or 100 lb weight without the exo. If the added mass of the exoskeleton isn't enough to let you compensate through such repositioning, then you won't lift the 500 lbs.

This thing is designed to augment strength and reduce fatigue, not grant omnipotent lifting.

(Smaller people like me tend to better understand the effect of advantageous positioning to reduce fatigue and better leverage what you can move and lift. Yes, one can actually use one's brain to do more physical labor.)

For rather large values of "nears":

It'll take five years to start deploying a version of the suit that must be tethered to a power source ... And for a free-range version, expect to wait a decade or more

Interesting TED talk/demonstration of the technology created by a different company.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLnOPA7oMxY

I didn't expect it to be flexible in the demo's, are we going to see it on the battlefield or construction sites first?

Construction sites. It needs external power.

I can imagine this thing being pretty impressive on a construction site - it could presumably do quite a few things which require a mini excavator today, like using extra-heavy jackhammers or clearing huge pieces of rubble. Having watched a warehouse near my flat being ponderously disassembled by a trio of excavators, I wonder whether using an exoskeleton would allow for greater speed due to a much more direct mapping of tool movement to natural human movements.

Definitely. Not just for demo, either— something trivial like sheetrocking a ceiling can be a hassle for a team of guys, never mind about something harder like framing. A team of guys in robosuits could knock it right out.

> "Nearing production," in the tech world, is even looser of a phrase than in Hollywood

Ooh, burn.

yeah, but Iron Man didn't have a big tether he dragged around. Battery tech seems like it is really the limiting factor in usefulness here.

The Neon Genesis Evangelion anime had "mecha" that needed an external power umbilical.

http://www.figures.com/forums/attachments/news/9508d12810229...

In a real-life combat situation, that would be debilitating, but it would be workable in a construction, rescue, or sporting context.

> By now, with films like Iron Man, its sequel, and Avatar, Hollywood has made us thoroughly familiar with the idea of the robotic exoskeleton.

I'm sorry, what? If you don't know what you're talking about, just don't talk about it. It's that simple. You lose credibility all around for every mistake you make.

What's wrong with mentioning Iron Man and Avatar?

Hollywood is not what made exoskeletons familiar. Things like the Iron Man comic series accomplished that long before Hollywood thought about it. It has also appeared in countless games, such as the Halo series.

But if you want to give extra credit to Hollywood, you should look at earlier popular movies that used exoskeletons. Such as the defenders of Zion in the sequels to The Matrix, or Starship Troopers.

These movies are the general public's largest source of information on the idea of robotic exoskeletons, that is just a fact.

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