Get away from her you b#%$@ - the Power Loader suit to become a reality

Gizmag.com ^ | 10/04/09 | Darren Quick

[Reaganesque]

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!

[Wolfie]

Nice. A human forklift...The “ForkYou”.

[Reaganesque]

There is a video as well at the link.

[GeronL]

You know the military will be interested

[wastedyears]

Useless without load-bearing legs.

The arms can lift a ton? Good, but human legs can’t support it.

[ltc8k6]

Augmented worksuits as a concept are much older than that movie.

[Reaganesque]

It does have legs. Watch the video.

[EricT.]

Let me know when they start building Mechwarriors.

[KarlInOhio]

But will it be useful for groping someone on a crowded Japanese subway?

[xcamel]

The US military has one that is way better already.

[Reaganesque]

Its a matter of time...

[mark3681]

“But will it be useful for groping someone on a crowded Japanese subway? “

Yes. But only once!

[mdmathis6]

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)

[MrB]

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.

[KarlInOhio]

I never have understood why giant robots would ever beat a good tank. Lots of moving parts and thin sections mean that the arms and legs can't be very heavily armored. A lot of height means that it is very visible at the same time people want to make tanks shorter to hide better. Also the small size of the feet compared to the overall size means that ground pressure will be much higher on the robot than the tank. You better not be fighting on anything other than concrete or late August midwest soil - during Spring it would quickly sink down to its waist in mud.

[And no, I didn't spend far too much time watching anime in my youth :-) ]

[50sDad]

Anyone remember the PADD, Star Trek TNG's Personal Access Display Device", the little I/O data gadget carried like a clipboard on board the Enterprise D? Look at today's PDA's, mini-laptops mainly for Internet data, and the rapidly expanding IPhone-style cell phone. (Or for that matter, the re-mapping touch sensitive control panels that today more and more are in banks and fast-food places.) The "isn't that a cool idea" device of SF always predates the actual enginhttp://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/PADDeered, real-world tool!

The PADD

[CholeraJoe]

“Lt. John Rico, please report to Armoring.”

[FlingWingFlyer]

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.

[agere_contra]

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)

[kidd]

Center of balance is all wrong.

Anything over a couple of hundred pounds would cause Ripley to fall forward.