

Army Exoskeleton Suit Gives Man Superhuman Strength - kkleiner
http://singularityhub.com/2009/06/11/army-exoskeleton-suit-gives-man-superhuman-strength/

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patio11
This technology is already commercially available in Japan. (The focus is less
on giving superhuman strength as to giving regular human strength to people
who don't have it -- think disabled folks or 60-something construction workers
being able to handle loads more appropriate to 20-something construction
workers without risking severe injury.)

My previous employer had a team working on various robotics projects, and I
was invited with them to a public presentation about related technologies by a
few companies in the field. It involved their favorite two tech demos: having
a skinny engineer pick up a young female presenter, and then having the young
female presenter pick up a large bag of rice, both without noticeable effort.
They also had a partially paralyzed man walk, _thrown in as an omake_. (I
don't even know what you call that anymore. You know the "And if you order a
large pizza we'll throw in a free small coke at no extra charge?" deals you
hear all the time. The small coke is omake. Like, you know, healing the lame.
Not worthy of a full bullet point by itself but as long as we have your
attention we thought we'd slide it in there.)

I asked when it would be commercially available, figuring "Five to ten years
in the future, right?" (+) and was told "Do you have a credit card on you?"

Some days I feel like I'm living in the future.

(+) I was attached to an AI project at the time. Like any good AI project, it
will be available 5 to 10 years in the future, just like it has been for the
last 30 years. Just like cost-competitive solar power. If you actually ship we
AI researchers get peevish and drum your stupid little engineering trick out
of the field.

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mcav
> _You know the "And if you order a large pizza we'll throw in a free small
> coke at no extra charge?" deals you hear all the time. The small coke is
> omake._

I'd call that an "added bonus", i think.

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wmeredith
I work with a tech company that refers to this sort of bonus deliverable in a
project as a "marshmallow." not sure why, they're Argentinian, so maybe it's a
cultural thing?

It's pretty effing rad that their marshmallow for the presentation was having
someone who is partially paralyzed _walk_.

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ruby_roo
Wouldn't it be nice not to have robots replace us, but instead make us better
at what we do?

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volodia
This is like Power Armor in Fallout 3!

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ramidarigaz
I want one.

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ramidarigaz
Ok, so maybe the comment wasn't constructive, but isn't that what you all
think when you watch the video?

Oh well. I'll try to make up for it!

One of the reasons this seems so awesome to me is that it could replace the
forklift, winch, pulley, or any given lifting/pulling/etc. based device.
Wouldn't it be so much easier to just lift something and carry it, rather than
loading it onto a forklift and then driving the forklift? It's a much more
intuitive and easy system.

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whatusername
Center of Mass (or just sheer bulk) would surely become an issue though.

Just because I can lift 1000kg of heavy material - doesn't mean that I can
life a big box that weight without tipping over. (Obviously you could make the
suit incredibly heavy - like say as heavy as a forklift - but it would become
pretty inefficient to try and move around)

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ramidarigaz
Two people.

