US Army Furthers Development of Robotic Suits

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports on advancements in the US military's robotic exoskeleton program. It's being spearheaded by Sarcos, a research laboratory in Utah. The firm has designed the XOS exoskeleton for US Army use, a lightweight frame that gives the user greater strength and endurance. 'With the exoskeleton on and fully powered up, Rex can easily pull down weight of more than 90 kilos, more than he weighs. For the army the XOS could mean quicker supply lines, or fewer injuries when soldiers need to lift heavy weights or move objects around repeatedly. Initial models would be used as workhorses, on the logistics side. Later models, the army hopes, could go into combat, carrying heavier weapons, or even wounded colleagues.'"

Battle of the Future

[locokamil (850008)]

I'll bludgeon you to death with my wounded comrade!

Re:

[dolphinling (720774)]

I'll bludgeon you to death with that exoskeleton's user person!

..."User person"? Seriously, who writes these things?

No Iron Man tag?

[dreamchaser (49529)]

I want an advanced armored exoskeleton. Make it fly too. I can do without the repulors if I MUST, but please do give me a big flamethrower and a chaingun on my model. Maybe some shoulder mounted RPG's too?

Re:

[Moraelin (679338)]

Nah. This is clearly a BattleTech Elemental [wikipedia.org] armour. Or will end up used as one.

Now what I want is a proper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mech [wikipedia.org]. I mean, they just need to make this thing 10m tall and give it a nuclear reactor as a power source, right?

Re:

[crawling_chaos (23007)]

Look up "high center of gravity" and get back to me on why Mechs are a colossally stupid idea.

Re:

[sumdumass (711423)]

There is plenty of use in close quarter inner city style combat situations. The exoskeleton allows for heavier armor that isn't limited to the bodies normal strength or physical endurance constraints. It can also allow larger volumes of ammo to be carried which means smaller unit teams could last longer in firefights making the use of manpower somewhat more efficient in these situations where a larger tank wouldn't do well.

You might even have the ability to mount 360 degree video directly transmitted to a r

Starcraft II

[AHumbleOpinion (546848)]

I want an advanced armored exoskeleton. Make it fly too. I can do without the repulors if I MUST, but please do give me a big flamethrower and a chaingun on my model. Maybe some shoulder mounted RPG's too?

And here we have another person that will seem to drop off the face of the planet once Starcraft II ships. Please remember not to play for 48 hours without sleep while consuming only nachos and soda, we wouldn't want you to permanently drop off the face of the planet. OK, maybe not "we" but "somebody" out there would care. ;-)

Re:

[dreamchaser (49529)]

Thank you. I needed a good laugh today :)

I am actually addicted to Medieval 2: Total War at the moment, but I am anticipating losing many hours to Starcraft II. I usually accompany my gaming with better fare though. A nice homebrewed IPA and some cheddar perhaps, or even some smoked salmon.

Re:

[Abreu (173023)]

Instead of Iron Man references, I'd say instead that the US Army is now in charge of Gundam

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[dkleinsc (563838)]

Here I was thinking this was intended for the Mobile Infantry. Go get 'em, Juan Rico.

Re:

[Cjstone (1144829)]

Stay on the bounce, ape.

Heinlein was either able to accurately predict the future of the military, or he directly inspired it. In fact, a Marine Corps general stated that the corps' future equipment and organization needed to emulate the Mobile Infantry from Starship Troopers.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[emilper (826945)]

Heinlein was in the army in his youth. No need to predict "the future of the military": armor has to be heavy to be truly effective, but if it's heavy, it limits the mobility of the soldier. Generals have been drooling for ways to make soldiers able to carry bigger guns and thicker plates for millennia.

Tanks are only a compromise, since you get only one cannon for 4 to 6 crew: crew members are much harder to replace than tanks or cannons, and they would be a lot more effective and less vulnerable if you could spread them instead of having all 4 in the same place.

During WWI, before armored vehicles became used, old style armor was tried, but it was too heavy: one example here (not in English, but the pictures don't need translation) http://historiasconhistoria.blogia.com/2008/021401-luchas-medievales-en-el-siglo-xx.php [blogia.com] ...

Re:

[emilper (826945)]

Correct ... where I live the concept denoted by "army" includes "navy", "aviation", "infantry", "armored ..." etc.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[jollyreaper (513215)]

I want an advanced armored exoskeleton. Make it fly too. I can do without the repulors if I MUST, but please do give me a big flamethrower and a chaingun on my model. Maybe some shoulder mounted RPG's too?

The problem is that you're still a squishy human inside. It would make more sense to operate robotic weapons platforms remotely, in conjunction with decent enough local AI on the unit itself. The scifi example would be from Night's Dawn where the are no starfighters per se, that role is taken over by combat drones called wasps. The mothership releases the wasps and those unmanned units perform the high-G maneuvers that would turn humans to jelly. The mothership than then move along a saner flight path, not having to worry about combat G-loads on the passengers.

Harry G. Stine's old Warbots series seems like a more realistic view of high-tech combat in the future, not as much Starship Troopers, though I would dearly love to have a combat suit like that. :) In the Stine setting, VR jacks into the human nervous system have been perfected. Soldiers could operate in the field in conjunction with unmanned warbots. These were not wise-cracking droids, they had all the personality of a Predator drone. The humans could fight in conjunction with these robots, sending them ahead to draw fire, directing them with a greater level of precision than could be had back at base. They could also use a limited VR to give more precise instructions than could be achieved with verbal commands. For very complicated ops, the operators could use a VR immersion device like the chairs in Matrix to go under and teleoperate the robots.

The other factor that made these weapons so effective was a god-like view of the battlefeld thanks to sensory fusion software and tiny observation robots. You know how you can see everything so well in video games but generals on the ground are stuck with maps and radio reports? Imagine having a view of the battlefield as detailed as the video game, and pushing the fog of war back to boot. That's what they're already working on at the Army testing ranges today, using low-observable drones to loiter over the battlefield.

Now if we ever get the quantum entanglement stuff sorted out and can come up with an untrackable instant communication technology like the ansible of scifi, then hooooooly shit. Right now the biggest drawback to remotely operated robots is that the AI's just aren't good enough yet to rely on local control in the event contact is lost. Predator drones can continue their mission on autopilot and fly back in range but the last thing I want to see is an armed combat bot on the ground trying to pick targets without a human to say "no, not a target, bad robot!" If they default to inactivity when jammed, that just means the enemy gets to pick them off as their leisure.

So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "aliens"

[zappepcs (820751)]

Seriously, this is a good thing but I think some of the 'planned' uses are a bit optimistic. I'm more than willing to be surprised though.

Anything with useful commercial life would need power like a forklift, and that is about as small as you can make a useful 'suit' for lifting that is self powered.

Who knows, maybe granny will walk again one day soon. What we do know is that she won't get to compete in the olympics with her new suit!

Won't somebody think of the illegal immigrants? This thing could put the day laborers out of work.

No car analogy yet... forklift was as close as I could get :)

Re:

[moderatorrater (1095745)]

No car analogy yet

If it's any consolation, you sound like the guy that kept trying to wash my windshield yesterday while I was stuck in traffic.

Re:So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "alie

[AHumbleOpinion (546848)]

No car analogy yet... forklift was as close as I could get :)

Who needs a car, just run down the freeway at 60 mph in the exoskeleton. :-)

They should ask Robert Downey Jr

[Rik Sweeney (471717)]

His photo is on some bloke's MySpace page, gang signs and all because he doesn't mind you throwing them up.

I really need to get back into my street talk...

The designing engineers.

[AltGrendel (175092)]

The designing engineers were primarily from Japan.

Re:

[Constantine XVI (880691)]

They just got frustrated with not being in charge of Gundam.

I wonder though

[hey! (33014)]

Why a suit, instead of an armed, semi-autonomous ROV? Why spend weight (and thus battery) protecting the squishy bits inside, when those bits can back home at an army base working eight hour shifts and going home to their families?

I realize that troops have to carry an ungodly amount of gear, but by the time all the technical challenges of a truly battle-ready suit are met, surely putting a person in it would be a waste.

Re:I wonder though

[dreamchaser (49529)]

Remote control will probably never be quite as good as having a human brain inside guiding it. The idea is to augment a soldier's physical abilities. As we know they already have battle robots that are operated remotely. This fills a different need. It's hard to judge how fast technology progresses or will progress, but I can conceive of Starship Trooper (the book, not that horrid movie) style gear in a hundred years or less.

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[hey! (33014)]

Remote control will probably never be quite as good as having a human brain inside guiding it.

Why not though? I'd like to see an airtight argument that practical powered armor is, net, more effective than an ROV. It's not that ROVs can, in the near future, replace soldiers, but in any case where you can imagine a suit like this being practical, surely an ROV would be more practical.

After all, soldier carry a lot of stuff, basically as much as physically possible without being a net impairment. The suit

Re:

[stubear (130454)]

Soldiers, in fully protective battle armor, can make decisions in the field that ROV operators are unable to make due to their distance and disconnection to the situation. Was that airtight enough for you or were you planning on completely panning this concept, trusting AIs to make decisions better then humans?

Re:

[dreamchaser (49529)]

We rely on it as a force multiplier, yes. That's different than having your force totally immobilized. There will always be a place for individual soldiers in the field, at least until when and if we get 'real' AI. Even then, do you want non-human intelligences controlling weapon's platforms anymore than they already do (AEGIS for one). Given that fact it makes perfect sense to augment the individual soldier's physical abilities and level of protection.

Re:

[hey! (33014)]

Sure, but don't higher power weapons translate into more rounds fired or higher kinetic energy per round? That's weight. I'm also suggesting that you probably can't add heavier armor without removing other things the soldier carries, or having the soldier's mobility restricted by the system. If he needs to move faster, he'd need to remove the added protection. If the system failed, even partially, he'd have to choose between mobility and protection.

Not that it wouldn't be cool to have power armored so

Re:I wonder though

[hey! (33014)]

OK, I'm playing devil's advocate here.

Is the human form really the ideal form for urban warfare? Why not a swarm of robotic bees with taser stings? Furthermore, you aren't restricted to one form factor. You can have robotic spy-flies, robotic sapper-rats, robotic wall battering elephants.

It's not that I can't imagine a force of power armored commandos that can do things that normally equipped ones cannot. It's that I can't imagine the technology that makes that practical not creating even better choices.

Re:

[hey! (33014)]

Now, put a saddle on that sucker and you have a 21st century Hussar.

Which might not be a bad idea. It's ironic that we're talking about technology like this, when every grunt or soldier I've ever talked to has the same complaint: the Pentagon can't seem to come up with a decent boot.

Re:I wonder though

[DarenN (411219)]

Because the meat inside gives it decision making capabilities that cannot be matched by AI either now or in the foreseeable future.

Also because the human body is remarkably flexible in its movement and our brains are evolved to be quite good at this type of movement. An augmentation system doesn't have to necessarily PROTECT the wearer - that's what armour is for. It's about enhancing the natural strength of the soldier, who is still one of the most effective weapons in nearly all combat situations. The ability to lift heavier objects (weapons, for instance), and presumably to throw things like grenades further will be useful.

I did find it amusing that the first uses are hoped to cause "fewer injuries when soldiers need to lift heavy weights or move objects around repeatedly". Not much of a combat objective!

Re:

[TimeTraveler1884 (832874)]

I can see a couple of reasons:

• Balance and dexterity of humans is available to the machine.
• Human decision making, feature recognition, senses and empathy are all available to the machine.
• Resilience, if the machine is damaged, the squishy bits can crawl out and still fight for a brief extended time.

Computing and robotics are not yet to the state that any of these can equate to the level of human ability.

Re:

[Itchyeyes (908311)]

I have to disagree. While robotic units are gaining an increasingly important role in combat operations we are a very, very long way from completely eliminating the human element of the battlefield. So long as human beings are involved in warfare, protecting them will have a key role.

Not to mention that while this kind of technology is being developed for the battlefield, it has uses far beyond combat. Suits like this could increase productivity and decrease injuries in any hundred of industries that requ

Re:

[Terminal Saint (668751)]

As a matter of fact, that's part of the plan.

If you watch this more detailed video from back in November: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=109_1195663753 [liveleak.com] they even mention that long term they plan to enable the suits to be autonomous. Soldier steps in and it's an exoskeleton, soldier steps out, it's a humanoid robot.

Re:

[hey! (33014)]

I have to admit, it's a pretty impressive demonstration.

Note, though, that the suit is tethered to a practically endless supply of power. That is why I think these things will not be practical in combat in most of our lifetimes. Muscle power is limited, but incredibly efficient. A solider can carry enough energy on him to keep him at peak performance for days.

Any practical untethered system would only be usable for a very short time, or it would be designed around the need to carry a massive power source.

Re:

[hey! (33014)]

Well, sure. The robots could be jammed, just like your guys can be killed by a massive fuel air-bomb or a biowarfare agent. It's the same concern, but the costs are different.

The ROV operators can try even harder than the power armored soliders to avoid capture. They can afford to "die".

I'm not suggesting for an instant that ROVs replace live soldiers. I'm saying that the technology to provide practical powered armor to troops could also create highly effective ROVs. It may be that the best choice woul

Yeah, but..

[Rob T Firefly (844560)]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these! [wikipedia.org]

Popsci

[howjan (629612)]

There was an article in this month's Popular Science [popsci.com] about suits like this. If this kind of thing trips your trigger that article is worth a read.

Prior Art

[greywire (78262)]

The big question for me is, can Stan Lee claim prior art against any attempt to patent this device?

loading bombs/missiles

[trybywrench (584843)]

this would go a long way in loading bombs or missiles on aircraft. I would imagine in a cramped environment it would be more agile then a forklift or whatever it is they use now. Also, it would be useful when doing stuff like changing a truck tire. Those things are heavy.

the path to Heinlein's Starship Troopers?

[peter303 (12292)]

The book, not the campy movie, introduces these power suits. [wikipedia.org] (I'm guessing the movie drops this much in the same way Spiderman is always pulling off his mask- the suit hides the humanity of the characters.)

Re:

[lymond01 (314120)]

Starship Troopers (the book) should be the main scifi reference to powered suits. Iron Man is fine, but Heinlein describes the idea very well: "You don't control the suit. You wear it, like putting on your shirt in the morning, you don't really notice its there. Except this suit makes a battalion of Sherman tanks look like cockroaches to a bazooka." (I...very badly...paraphrase.)

Build a bigger, badder suit, armored head to toe, so it can carry the power supply as well.

What terrain would be suitable for powered suits?

[TheHawke (237817)]

Here's that ages-old question: Where are you going to be able to safely and efficiently operate a powered suit without sinking up to your waist in muck, tipping over due to unstable or uneven terrain, and be able to lift a working payload at the same time.

'Suits have this problem called weight distribution. Their footprints are about on par with a small car overloaded. When try to move loads on poor terrain, you'll wind up either getting dug out or being picked back up because the soil could not hold you up. Tracks that can handle twice their load can dance on that kind of terrain, even BobCats with tracks can handle soft sands that would try to swallow an average joes' foot.

I can see powersuits working on prepared grounds, Asphalt, cement concrete, macadam with treated substrates, but not thrown into a active combat situation where they would have to slog through mud or soft soils.

The 2nd Amendment

[Charcharodon (611187)]

I hope the 2nd Amendment covers these things when they start being released commercially.

The right to bare Robot arms shall not be infringed!

Re:obligatory quote...

[Nick Number (447026)]

"Obligatory" in this case meaning "incorrect".

It's "Get away from her, you bitch!"

Re:

[halivar (535827)]

I wanted to tag it getawayfromheryoubitch, but my funny tagging efforts only ever go for naught. Alas...

Re:

[Digi-John (692918)]

Drive heavy machinery much? It's not difficult once you get used to it, but being able to pick up, move, stack, etc. various heavy things using my hands instead of a rather crude and clumsy mechanical manipulator (forks) would be great.

Re:Why bother?

[AHumbleOpinion (546848)]

Lifting stuff, we have forklifts for that. Much simpler and cheaper.

Really, you've seen many forklifts in the field unloading Hueys or Blackhawks, or unpacking a palette from a Chinook or Hercules?

Heavy weapons? Is the US military's problem really a lack of firepower? I seriously doubt it.

OK, you obviously never saw the guy carrying the M60 and its ammo.

Re:

[Chris Burke (6130)]

Lifting stuff, we have forklifts for that. Much simpler and cheaper.

But, but, that only works if you stack the stuff on a pallet first! How does the heavy stuff get on the pallet, huh? That's right, guy in power armor.

Heavy weapons? Is the US military's problem really a lack of firepower? I seriously doubt it. Maybe there is a lack of ethics and diplomacy but they can bounce corpses and ashes pretty high already.

They're sick of "Army of One" being a marketing slogan about how they teach you personal stren

Re:

[PinkyDead (862370)]

I suspect that these kind of things have a less obvious purpose - as marketing tools to justify military spending.

Take NASA, for instance, people didn't mind huge amounts being spent on it when there was something exciting and heroic to see - such as landing on the moon. As soon as the job became routine and much more practical, no one was interested and they got their funding cut.

If the military regularly rolls out these futuristic and legitimately expensive pieces of kit - then the public interest is mai

Re:

[Itchyeyes (908311)]

this sentence still makes no sense. I can "pull down" double my weight with my little finger. Pulling it UP would be hard.

Except when the weight is on a pulley system as it clearly shows in the video. Who the hell modded this as insightful?

Re:Weight of more than 90 kilos?

[Chris Burke (6130)]

Ignoring the fact that the kilogram is a measure of mass, not force, this sentence still makes no sense. I can "pull down" double my weight with my little finger. Pulling it UP would be hard.

Translation: "I've never seen the inside of a gym before."

It's okay, this is an understanding crowd for such things. ;)