Most military programs don't coordinate news releases with major motion pictures. With Iron Man in theaters and getting reviews that will induce me to go, Raytheon is taking the time to promote its US Army-funded exoskeleton suit. Originally funded under a 7-year, $75 million DARPA program, the suite has now gone on to the next stage under a 2-year, $10 million follow-on Army grant:
The problem they're trying to address is no stunt. The weight of a soldier's equipment easily approaches 80-100 pounds, far higher than the 30 pounds recommended for maximum mobility. As we load our soldiers down with more technical gadgets, that weight tends to go up, not down. The USA and Japan are only a couple of the countries working on aspects of a mechanical exoskeleton that would give its wearers vastly improved strength and endurance.
While Japanese demographic and cultural trends in particular are giving concepts like individual soldier augmentation a push, we can still expect a very long wait before we see exoskeletons that can deliver the required performance to justify their cost, can handle military conditions, and can be maintained in the field at reasonable cost. It's far more likely that first fielding, if there is one, will involve more limited use of the technologies by disabled soldiers, or be used like Cyberdyne Japan's HAL-5 in private, para-public, and first responder roles. Raytheon release | Raytheon feature | Popular Science [PDF].
The suits should go nicely with new technologies for bionic contact lenses.
My guess is relatively cheap robots that can follow "masters" in the field will do the trick first. Why should troops carry anything other than the tools to confront the enemy if a robot mule can carry the baggage for them>
Sci-fi? Check this out.
We've covered the "Big Dog," and Future Combat Systems has a wheeled robot design called MULE. MULE may never see the light of day, though.
Meanwhile, the kind of advances made with exoskeletons and prosthetics (which involve many similar technologies) will drive civilian applications in time. I suspect we'll be able to wire people to an exoskeleton before we're able to mend broken spinal cords, for instance.
Sorry, I missed previous coverage of Big Dog. Saw it today for the first time. Potential civilian applications notwithstanding, I still think robotics is a better investment of DoD dollars.
NASA dollars might be a different question, though....
Anyone remember Aliens? How about the Direct TV ads spoofing Aliens? Anyone?? Sure, this is cooler but the basic idea has been out there way before this Iron Man movie.
Like, what do you do when the batteries run down? Do you become like a bug turned over on its back?
Does it come in red?
The issue for the forseeable future is how big it makes the soldiers profile, which is a huge issue. You could make the whole guy armored enough to stop most small arms... at the cost of even more weight, and we get into the old cycle again. Armament has always won that battle- you can always project more force than an object (or person) can deflect or absorb pound for pound.
I think what we have here is the all-terrain, all weather horse of the 21st century. I see this as a mode of transportation where wheels, tracks, and rotors cant go. You might be able to fight in these things, but i think you probably don't want to, at least until they are as small and nimble as a human being. Let them trek you out to where you need to be, then get out and find some cover. And i imagine they would be impressive cutting an escape route through an 'impassable' jungle, or turning a retreat into a route.
I would love to have a civilian use protective suit for driving. It could be some combination of thin kevlar, a motorcycle suit, and some of these military technologies. It would be flexible like normal clothing, but would absorb blows.
That would go a long way towards shielding automobile drivers in accidents.
Take the Raytheon project, integrate with something like this and you've got a... Transformer? Real life mecha anime? US Army road warrior?
Paul M., that is indeed the current issue, and the big future issue as well: power source. Note the cord running to the suit shown.
There are a lot of military and civilian reasons that are creating a big opportunity for a very high density energy storage medium, and those pressures will probably create baby steps and productive research. The question is how long we'll take before we discover how to cooperate with the right laws of physics, in order to get what we're looking for. I honestly do not know.
Wireless power transfer! An idea who's time has come and gone and come again! Space based solar farms beaming microwave radiation into theater! Tesla lives!
Power storage systems (batteries) still suck.
One semi-promising avenue is actually small arrays of MEMS turbine combustion engines, each roughly the size of a dime, built into the frame of whatever the Future Cyborg Soldier has for his packframe / exoskeleton. It appears that, at least in theory, efficiency of gas turbines goes up as size decreases. There are no figures on how that degrades over operating hours, yet.
In all events, as energy density goes up, one must evaluate the increase in number of possible colorful deaths when the individual's energy reservoir gets released all at once by (e.g.) a sniper round. "Can you say 'thermal runaway'? Sure."
Seriously, beamed power, hypothetically, might help to concentrate that risk back-echelon. But beaming power into theater isn't enough. You gotta light each "Mobile" up with a high density beam. A different risk them propagates to the guy in front: bad guys then using that info in various clever or rude ways.
PS: Mark, "The nation that controls magnetism will control the universe!" --know the quote?
It's far more likely that first fielding, if there is one, will involve more limited use of the technologies by disabled soldiers, or be used like Cyberdyne Japan's HAL-5 in private, para-public, and first responder roles.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Do we really want a company with that particular name going anywhere near this sort of technology?
Joshua:
Ha ha. Here's another one; the UK military's new communications satellite system (first satellite launched last year) is called Skynet. Seems like the military is asking for trouble? :)