From Bust A Change, again – go there and check out the video (or see below), its totally worth watching – I just couldn’t pass this up. The Salt-Lake City company Sarcos (now bought out by Raytheon) has developed an effective exoskeleton, to meet DARPA’s 2000 request for proposals. This was a comment I left : “Functional robot exoskeletons. This is ridiculous. The bulletproof body armor suits are totally Heinlen-era starship troopers come to life. I don’t know how well they could aim rifles with that thing, but maybe guns could simply be mounted onto the armor… I used to fantasize about this stuff when I was a kid, and now its coming true. Needless to say, I find this really remarkable. It could have quality civilian uses – walking suits for disabled people isn’t out of the question by any means. This stuff would be absolutely terrifying on the battlefield. At least on a large, flat plain of a battlefield. Maybe the enhanced body armor would function well for city fighting… The world becomes more Sci-Fi every day.” Its not really terrifying me at the moment. Maybe it should. I wonder if they will be Wi-Fi compatible – they better have really excellent firewalls, or they’re going to be in trouble. Imagine being stuck in one of those things that had gone catatonic, or if the motors decided to go in the wrong directions… Anybody remember Fallout? Yeah, for reals.
On a tangential note, check out this video of a Timberjack walking logging machine (1st video below). Apparently, it can go at a much more decent clip than the somewhat sloth-like pace below… Maybe they didn’t want to scare people. I can see this being much more usable at this point than the somewhat feeble two-legged Landwalker (2nd vid). I could see it effectively moving over the rubble of cities, much as it handled the uneven forest terrain. Who knows what the military has of this type of vehicle at this point. The powered suit was only visible cause DARPA put out a large-scale competition for who could make the best prototyped.
What I think I like most about all this is that people are really making their dreams come true, bringing images from the collective imagination into reality. If anything is going to get humanity out of the messes that it is currently in, its this capacity to realize our dreams. (the dream-realization, not the mechs, cool as they are).
Also see Carl Owens, a young alaska man who built his own mecha. With eyes. And flamethrowers. I think he had to register it with the local sheriff, just in case. And I don’t know if it can walk. But I think that he’s kinda cute.
