Japan Displays Prototype Robot Suit 239
anaesthetica writes "A project at Tsukuba University has produced a battery-powered robot suit designed to aid the wearer in strength-related tasks, like lifting heavy objects. The suit also has the capability of propelling itself, which is potentially useful for helping the handicapped or elderly walk. The optimistic professor who lead the project stated, 'Humans may be able to mutate into supermen in the near future.'"
We all saw what happened to the X-Men (Score:3, Funny)
This might be a problem for the humans involved though... We all saw what happened to the X-Men.
Holy crap! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:We all saw what happened to the X-Men (Score:2, Funny)
Re:We all saw what happened to the X-Men (Score:2)
wait a minute.. HAIL JAPAN IN ALL OF ITS GLORY
Re:We all saw what happened to the X-Men (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah... just like remote controls were able to mutate us into being able to control electronic equipment with our minds.
Re:We all saw what happened to the X-Men (Score:2)
Your ass is grass, monkeys. This exoskeleton is nothing compared to what nanotech enhancements will allow.
Re:We all saw what happened to the X-Men (Score:2)
Rise of the Suits?! (Score:2, Funny)
Coming soon to theatres, Terminator 4: Rise of the Suits
Re:Rise of the Suits?! (Score:2)
Re:Rise of the Suits?! (Score:2)
Re:Rise of the Suits?! (Score:2)
Re:Rise of the Suits?! (Score:2)
Re:Rise of the Suits?! (Score:2)
Obviously... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obviously... (Score:2)
Re:Obviously... (Score:3, Informative)
First Generation Technology... (Score:5, Funny)
Discussed Previously (Score:2)
Re:Discussed Previously (Score:2)
Dan East
Why dont the use EAPs (Score:2, Interesting)
Because they are nowhere near as powerful (Score:2)
I dunno... (Score:5, Funny)
But since she's not that much of a payload, the pictures might as well be of a guy wearing a Stormtrooper costume doing deep knee bends.
Re:I dunno... (Score:2, Funny)
My thoughts exactly. I want to see the samll Japanese woman put on the suit and pick him up. Better yet, I want to see her pick up a car, or a 16 foot tall egg-laying alien queen.
Re:I dunno... (Score:2)
I was wondering when someone would bring up Aliens. This is the first thing I thought of until I read the article. Ripley used an industrial version of this type of suit in that movie. The "suit" was a cross between this type of device and a forklift, and was used (when not fighting aliens) to move freight on the ship. Although the suit in the article is much smaller, it looks like it could be used for loads that are too heavy for a normal human, but too small for a fork lift.
Re:I dunno... (Score:2)
Thanks to those herbal pills I just ordered from that e-mail, I'll soon have loads too heavy for a normal human.
Re:I dunno... (Score:5, Funny)
Have you not seen Japanese anime before? The dorky guy always gets his butt kicked by the schoolgirls. The dorky guy needs a power suit to protect himself when tangling with the opposite sex.
Re:I dunno... (Score:2)
show me the loading dock exo-skeleton from 'aliens' and I'll be impressed. This guy is going to break his ankles if he dates larger women... maybe if they put some feet on it, he'll be able to carry his woman across the threshold with more than stumpy nubs left at the ends of his legs.
And who would dare fight the alien queen in any color other th
Re:I dunno... (Score:2)
Re:I dunno... (Score:2)
It's not quite a stormtrooper, but it's close [yimg.com]
scary (Score:5, Funny)
Re:scary (Score:2)
Re:scary (Score:2)
Stephen Hawking (Score:2)
Yet another successful prediction [paralinks.net] by The Onion [theonion.com]!
Re:Stephen Hawking (Score:2, Funny)
Be careful, though. (Score:5, Funny)
Fogeys in Robot suits (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan has seen a growing market for technology geared toward the elderly, who are making up an increasing chunk of the population as fewer younger Japanese choose to start families.
A government report last week showed that pensioners made up a record 19.5 percent of the country's population in 2004 and that the ratio will grow rapidly, surpassing 35 percent in 2050.
Did anyone else shudder at the image of senior citizens ambling down the street in robot suits? Just imagine the damage potential.
Re:Fogeys in Robot suits (Score:2)
Bah, don't worry about it. They won't make it past ten miles an hour, regardless of what the suits can do. I'm more worried about the damage potential of a kid of the punk-ass variety.
Re:Fogeys in Robot suits (Score:2, Insightful)
What about cars? (Score:3, Interesting)
Note: I have no beef with 99.9% of the senior population but my car was totaled by a member of the remaining 0.1% a few years back by him pulling onto a main street with blinders on. Daylight too. Luckily the old man survived without permanent injury. However, he'd have been better off letting someone else drive.
Re:Fogeys in Robot suits (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, and they're always walking too slowly in front of you, with the turn indicator stuck on.
Bubblegum Crisis? (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegum_Crisis [wikipedia.org]
Re:Bubblegum Crisis? (Score:4, Interesting)
It Should Be Popular.... (Score:5, Funny)
Finally (Score:5, Funny)
On a related note, check out the Japanese booth babes on the slide show.
(Just kidding honey, if you're reading this.)
Uses... (Score:2, Funny)
In related news... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:In related news... (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.
C'mon HAL, I really gotta go!
I'm sorry Dave, you should have thought of that before we left.
HAL, you're really starting to piss me off.
And so on and so forth, until Dave is electrocuted when he finally loses control of his bladder ("My God, it's full of sparks!").
Semi-useful (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Semi-useful (Score:2, Informative)
Lift "heavy loads" (Score:5, Funny)
Saving lives would a nice use.... (Score:2, Interesting)
The tide is turning... (Score:5, Funny)
I just hope (Score:2, Funny)
Supermen? (Score:5, Funny)
Ironicly, I just got Viagra Spam that used that exact same phrasing...
Re:Supermen? (Score:2)
What is ironic is how many people, like you, use the word "irony" incorrectly.
Wait till you see what happens.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait till you see what happens.. (Score:2)
Re:Wait till you see what happens.. (Score:2)
Advanced features? (Score:2)
Sheesh - a geek alright... (Score:3, Funny)
RE: Brownie points (Score:2, Funny)
Robot suit=halloween costume? (Score:2)
good way to lose a hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remind me again why you would want to be able to have superhuman strength when all it's going to do is cause you to smash a body part if not amputate yourself by accident.
That was the plot of an anime called PATLABOR (Score:2)
So the police buy some, paint them blue and strap big guns to them and call them PATROL LABORs (which nobody says because it takes too long).
Queue anime fun.
"Robot"? (Score:2)
It looks like we're getting closer to... (Score:2)
Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I am an anime otaku.
"Robot suit?!" (Score:3, Informative)
Sheesh.
HAL-5? (Score:2)
Are they TRYING to make killer robots?
Yeah well.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Triggur's Mech [triggur.org] (Triggur, forgive me!)
I'll Be Impressed (Score:3, Funny)
when I see this guy pick up an AMERICAN girl instead of a tiny Japanese girl! A FAT American girl!
Repliee Qi (Score:2)
Batteries ;-) (Score:2)
Apparently, they also can only be piloted by 14-year-olds. On top of that, these things have a mind of their own, so be careful!
Thank God, just in time... (Score:3, Funny)
Alternate Application (Score:2, Insightful)
You could have the exoskeleton partially resist every muscle movement. Then it becomes an exercise suit.
Re:That's a transformer (Score:2, Funny)
Mod Parent (-1, Lack of Reading Comprehension) (Score:4, Informative)
FTA:
The 15-kilogram (33-pound) battery-powered suit, code-named HAL-5, detects muscle movements through electrical-signal flows on the skin surface and then amplifies them. It can also move on its own accord, enabling it to help elderly or handicapped people walk, developers said.
Thanks for playing.
Handicapped people don't have those signals (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose if you expanded the group of "handicapped" to include those suffering from polio and other diseases that result muscular dystrophy, then I can see this argued, but paraplegics and quadraplegics are not going to be helped, despite the claims of the article.
And I'll take -1 Offtopic again for saying so.
Re:Handicapped people don't have those signals (Score:2)
I take this to mean that it doesn't need to receive electric-signals to move. I'd guess that it has a joystick or breathing tube type movement control or something like that, maybe even tracking head or eye movement. My guess is that its secondary movement is one that would be used by a para or quadraplegic's wheelchair. But it's clear that the electric-signal movement is not its only co
Re:Handicapped people don't have those signals (Score:4, Insightful)
Walking, it ain't.
Semantics. Clearly they wouldn't be walking in the classic sense of the word, but they'd be repeating the same action, bipedal movement. They just wouldn't be triggering the movement with their own legs, but via another source. I assure you that everyone doing it will refer to it as 'walking' as opposed to "being carried" or "motiled". People want to focus on what they can do, not what they can't, so they'll want to use the most positive term, which in this case would be, walking.
Re:Handicapped people don't have those signals (Score:4, Insightful)
> "handicapped" to include those suffering from
> polio and other diseases that result muscular
> dystrophy...
It's strange definition of 'handicapped' that excludes those people.
Re:Mod Parent (-1, Lack of Reading Comprehension) (Score:2)
Using this technology for police work (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Using this technology for police work (Score:2)
Re:Using this technology for police work (Score:2)
Dept. of Homeland Security
Re:Using this technology for warfare. (Score:2)
How? The only things I can think of that help against such guerilla tactics are good armor and staying alert. Anyhow, who needs super strength when you have good ol' firepower?
Re:Using this technology for warfare. (Score:2)
Last I heard, it was a little buggy. I don't know if they ever rolled it out.
Well, that's the WHOLE point (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is exactly why and what for: to enable soldiers to carry more armour and dish out more firepower.
Don't think for a moment that military applications of super-strength will mean Superman-style punching villains in the face. It won't. Ever.
However a major topic throughough the last century has been the weight of ammo and equipment a soldier has to carry. It's a real issue. That's one of the reasons (among other factors) why we've moved to smaller calibres.
Put some powered armour on those soldiers and suddenly they can carry a lot more heavy weaponry and ammo.
Individual armour has also been discarded precisely because of weight considerations: you _could_ make a breastplate that could stop a rifle round, but it was impractically heavy.
Now think the other way around: if you have an armoured exo-skeleton, you can carry enough armour at least over the vital organs to stop even a 7.62mm round or shrapnel from hand grenades and pipe bombs. _And_ this time it's without a mobility penalty.
You've just made life harder for the enemy soldiers, because now they need to lug around bigger weaponry to take you out, which limits _their_ mobility.
But perhaps more importantly, and this is really what makes it a wet dream for the military is: enabling soldiers to carry more electronics and a sattellite connection. Giving at least one soldier per squad enough electronics to know exactly where the enemy is, what's happening, where is the squad needed, what should they avoid, etc, is something that can give a _huge_ advantage.
Nations have been defeated before because basically their chain of command didn't react fast enough. E.g., that's why large armies like those of France or Poland crumbled in the face of Blitzkrieg in WW2. They just weren't prepared to react at that speed.
Or the USSR in WW2 was massively handicapped by their lack of radios on their tanks.
Now picture giving each squad a direct link to their officers _all_ the time. Bidirectional. You can know _exactly_ what's happening at each point, in real time, and the soldiers can know exactly what's expected of them. You can instantly see when your troops are being pinned and flanked, and how, and you can tell them exactly how to counter it. Better yet they too can see a bigger picture and react in a more intelligent manner.
It's something that can really make or break a battle.
Re:Well, that's the WHOLE point (Score:2)
Re:Well, that's the WHOLE point (Score:4, Informative)
First, it isn't so much about the weight that someone needs to carry to handle these weapons, it is the recoil. The reason a
More electronics = better chance of detection.
Infantry is supposed to be invisible. That's why they put all that fancy makeup on their faces - so they blend in. If they radiate a lot in the EM spectrum, someone is going to detect it and drop a few white phosphorus artillery rounds on them. Also, (as someone else pointed out earlier), there aren't power-ups behind every tree, and batteries weigh a LOT. Infantry is also great because they don't need much in the way of logistics. They can walk out with a heavy pack and be fine for 2 weeks. They might come back tired, dirty and hungry, but they don't need a fuel truck every 2 days to keep moving.
I agree with you that situational awareness is incredibly important, and that the best plans fall apart upon enemy contact. However, there is also a thing called information overload. If a squad leader is worried about what the rest of the platoon is doing, they aren't focused on what their squad is doing. If they are paying attention to what the individual squad members are doing, they aren't using their fire team leaders. It is a delicate balancing act. Too much info can mean the important details are missed. Not enough info can also hurt.
Personally, I think powered armor of some sort is a great idea for a Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) environment. Since there is fighting house-to-house and block-to-block, the logistics are much simpler. Also, with heavier armor, a "standard" bullet can be ignored. BTW - There is body armor out there that will stop a 7.62mm round from an AK-74 at close range (less than 10 meters), and they are pretty heavy, but not when compared to a full load on an infantryman. The real risk is keeping the wearer cool enough since no air can circulate around the torso. When considering ambient temperature during training exercises, the presence of a standard flak jacket is considered to be a +15 degree fahrenheit modifier.
For those who care, I was in the US Marine infantry for 4 years, as a rifleman and as a member of their Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team. I graduated from the Marine Security Forces school and from the Designated Marksman School (similar to a SWAT team sniper) and I graduated 3rd in my class at the Advanced Infantry School at Camp Pendelton. While I don't think I am an expert in all things military, or even infantry combat, I think I know what I am talking about.
Re:Using this technology for warfare. (Score:2)
Re:Using this technology for warfare. (Score:5, Funny)
the combat environment is more complex and demanding than the loading dock and you won't find power-ups hidden behind every crate.
Re:Using this technology for warfare. (Score:2, Informative)
Besides the novella about the rise to power and eventual defeat of a despotic religious political movement in the US in REVOLT IN 2010, he wrote many other works.
Unlike the movies and animated TV series adopted from the original work. Heinlein's original book, STARSHIP TROOPERS, had Johnny Rico wearing his Mobile Infantry Power Suite leaping over the enemy city with rocket assisted steps, looking at his heads-u
Re:Using this technology for warfare. (Score:2)
But yes, certain of the themes could be interesting today.
Re:elders (Score:2)
Re:elders (Score:2)
Re:I'll take two... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I have a simple question... (Score:2)
Well, someone had to say it.
Re:I have a simple question... (Score:2)
In larger countries, many people purposely retire in little towns and villages, where they can die one day in peace, without danger of ending up in a hospital, hooked onto some machine. Japan, being small, has good hospitals pretty much everywhere, making the 'natural death' option impossible.
Re:yea, yea, yea (Score:2)
Re:A Little Bit about Tsukuba University (Score:2)
Don't lie. You're posting on slashdot. Everyone knows you haven't been doing either #3 or #4.