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

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

No Iron Man tag?

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:

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?

Starcraft II

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:

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

Re:No Iron Man tag?

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

Re:No Iron Man tag?

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:No Iron Man tag?

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"

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 :)

I wonder though

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

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.

Re:

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 futu

Re:I wonder though

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:I wonder though

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:

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

Re:

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, protect

Popsci

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.

loading bombs/missiles

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?

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.)

What terrain would be suitable for powered suits?

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

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...

"Obligatory" in this case meaning "incorrect".

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

Re:

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

Re:Why bother?

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:Weight of more than 90 kilos?

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. ;)