Posted on 10/05/2009 6:50:13 AM PDT by Reaganesque
Science-fiction is well on the way to becoming science fact with engineers from Activelink, a Kyoto-based subsidiary of Panasonic, developing an exoskeleton suit inspired by the "Power Loader" suit Ripley wore in her climactic battle with the Queen Alien in Aliens. And, just like in the movie, the Power Loader suit is designed to give its wearer superhuman strength for the lifting of heavy objects – in the movie it was cargo, but Activelink also has construction and disaster relief operations in its sights.
The suit is constructed from an aluminum-alloy frame and weighs 230kg (507 lbs). Similar to the Robot Suit Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) we looked at earlier this year, the current version of the new suit contains 18 electromagnetic motors, which are controlled by components that measure the direction and magnitude of the force applied by the human operator. These motors allow the human operator to easily lift loads of 100kg (220 lbs), and the control system also provides force feedback to directly feel the behavior of the suit. Activelink says this allows the user to establish a correspondence between his own operation and the movement of the robot.
The Power Loader suit is currently in development, but Activelink has plans to release a version of the robot suit to the market by the 2015.
Science fiction becomes a reality. Kinda figures though. When I first saw "Aliens," the power lifter seemed to make a lot of sense and I wondered why such a thing didn't exist. Leave it to the Japanese to bring it to reality. Next stop: real Gundam style battle-bots!
Nice. A human forklift...The “ForkYou”.
There is a video as well at the link.
You know the military will be interested
Useless without load-bearing legs.
The arms can lift a ton? Good, but human legs can’t support it.
Augmented worksuits as a concept are much older than that movie.
It does have legs. Watch the video.
Its a matter of time...
“But will it be useful for groping someone on a crowded Japanese subway? “
Yes. But only once!
If they can perfect the manipular action to allow finer control, myriads of nurses will bless the use of these devices to help with the turning and bathing of very heavy patients!(as well as assisting with agressive Physical therapy which often gets deferred to the point of neglect)
That’s what I noticed.
So what if the arms can lift 100 kg - all the weight is still on human shoulders, back, and legs.
[And no, I didn't spend far too much time watching anime in my youth :-) ]
“Lt. John Rico, please report to Armoring.”
When I saw it in the movie, I thought the same thing. I thought maybe we did have one of those things already or that somebody was at least working on it.
I believe that real Mechs are a pipedream: but there’s certainly room for Powered Armor, which is more what this article is about.
But considering Mechs a moment: the handwave might be that these giant MechWarriors (or whatever) have room for a Fusion Reactor, and that their shape is therefore optimal for heat dissipation.
All that power for transmission, all that surface area for dissipation, some clever stabilization and suddenly you have a 50 tonne monster running at 150 mph (!)
I guess Mech-enthusiasts could also argue that the legs are indeed relatively weakly armored, but they’re also losable: if you have six of them then you can potentially lose three before falling over - that’s three tank-killing hits that only slowed you down. And being able to make a pop-up attack from behind a house is pretty cool :0)
Center of balance is all wrong.
Anything over a couple of hundred pounds would cause Ripley to fall forward.
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