Hydraulic Exoskeleton Promises Bionic Soldiers

[M.D. Holloway]

interesting idea - reminds me of the cargo movers in the Alien movie...

The U.S. Army-developed Sarcos exoskeleton is a hydraulic-powered device designed to ease soldiers' tasks. But in developing the device, the implications for seniors having trouble walking or lifting cannot be ignored. Sarcos wearers have demonstrated climbing stairs as well as moves for playing sports, including soccer and boxing. Allowing soldiers to run and lift with less exertion would give them greater endurance when toting weapons and armor. Future developments look to include autonomous operation to do mundane robotic tasks after an operator "sheds" the skeleton.


At the rate the United States military is going, it looks like all that video game training is really going to start paying off for me, and probably sooner rather than later.

Remote control planes can be flown over the battlefield from hundreds of miles away. Aircraft can convert from helicopters to propellered planes and back in seconds. Magnetic rail guns can fire four-pound projectiles at speeds of three kilometers per second, or 6,700 miles per hour. That’s fast enough to put a hole through pretty much anything — a weaponized version of the hypothetical irresistible force. Now, thanks to a news report filed by Utah-based NBC-affiliate KSL, the whole world has seen the latest and greatest piece of military technology waiting for us in the pipeline, the Sarcos exoskeleton.

The video report made waves on a number of science and technology blogs, and before long it generated enough momentum to score a mention under the “Latest News” section of CNN’s website. I’ll admit to not expecting much when I clicked on the link late Tuesday night, it just seemed like a good way to procrastinate before starting some class reading.

Then Rex Jameson, the exoskeleton’s wearer/operator/pilot, straps himself into the machine and starts doing 200-pound pull-downs on a weight machine while chatting casually with the reporter. He hefts 35-pound ammo cans off the ground and onto a pallet with the same ease you or I would have putting a T-shirt in the hamper. He runs up stairs, up ramps, boxes a bit, even plays catch with a soccer ball before going back to just plain lifting things.

Sarcos, a Salt Lake City based robotics firm founded by University of Utah professor Stephen Jacobsen, isn’t the only company to develop a powered exoskeleton using computer-controlled hydraulics to supplement human physical capabilities. A group at the Japanese Tsukuba University hopes to rent its suit, the HAL-5, to elderly people who need help lifting objects or walking up stairs.

The ostensible purpose of suits like the Sarcos exoskeleton is simply to give the individual soldier more load-bearing capacity. Being able to run and haul with less exertion means soldiers with more endurance who can move faster while carrying even heavier weapons and armor.

Sarcos is making the human body better, faster and stronger. Watching Jameson pump iron like Hercules, it wasn’t that difficult to picture him using the suit to throw one of those ammo cans across the covered pavilion used for the demonstration, or maybe just simply punch through a support beam and send the whole thing tumbling down, Samson-style. The whole demonstration reminded me of the trailer for next summer’s “Iron Man” movie.

With a cool toy like this out there, it’s like the military is practically begging me to enlist. Seriously, what’s next, a lightsaber? Sarcos is already producing an armored version of its exoskeleton, a suit that looks eerily like something Halo’s Master Chief would wear. Eventually, they hope to make the exoskeleton autonomous, something that can function even after the soldier/pilot steps out of it to handle a more mundane task.

“If you step out of it, it becomes a humanoid robot,” Jacobson tells the KSL crew. “If you step into it, it becomes a superhero.”

But is this what our military really needs right now, engaged as it is in a quagmire of a conflict against an enemy indistinguishable from civilians? Would a soldier rather have an automated sidekick — Robot the Boy Wonder — or vehicles armored to withstand an IED attack, as Specialist Thomas Wilson famously asked of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2004? What’s going to help a company of troops find more bad guys: A suit that can punch in a door or another guy who can speak fluent Arabic?

Instead of actually being helpful, too much technology can just be overwhelming on the battlefield. Take the Army’s Land Warrior infantry system. Land Warrior was designed to turn each individual soldier into his own self-contained unit, rather than a segment of a larger group.

Each Land Warrior system includes a radio, a GPS receiver and an electronic monocle that can display the location of the soldier and his squad mates on a digital map or a real-time video gathered from a camera mounted on the soldier’s weapon, allowing him to zoom or even shoot around corners. It’s Halo come to life — nearly everything a hardcore gamer has come to expect on his screen showing up in real life.

There’s only one problem. The soldiers hate it.

In a piece for the May 2007 issue of Popular Mechanics, Noah Shachtman delves into the reasons why: It’s cumbersome, unreliable, and according to one soldier, it’s “taking the place of useful stuff like guns.” The Army is trying to bring the 20th century soldier into a 21st century world, but the soldiers are having no part of it.

Contrary to what we may like to believe, war really doesn’t have much in common with a video game. Your video game avatar never trips over an exposed ledge while he’s looking at his radar, never has trouble hefting a gun with a camera mounted on it after he’s injured in an hours-long fire fight.

On the front lines, finding a reliable weapon and enough ammo to shoot out of it can still be a problem — fiddling with a computer strapped to his or her chest is pretty low priority for a soldier under fire. High-tech gadgets like the Land Warrior or the Sarcos exoskeleton may be the future of our military, but we can’t spend money on the future at the expense of the present.

Of course, once the Sarcos suit works out all the kinks and becomes standard-issue to our active duty troops, you can sign me up. If the elderly in Japan can use it, then I don’t see why I can’t.

[Mo_Gearhead]

When I was a kid (1950's) I would read comic books. The idea that Dick Tracy could communicate with a wrist-mounted, two-way, TV-radio was AWESOME ...and seemed so far away from any reality.

My Grandmother came to Missouri in a covered wagon from Oklahoma (reverse migration?). She lived to see men walk on the moon.

Ever see the movie 'RoboCop'?

Welcome to your future ... in the cities (cops) and on the battlefield (armies).

[RickM]

Here comes grandma