Have you been waiting for a legion of half-man, half-machine storm troopers to descend upon your city and blaze a round of hellfire in all general directions? If you said yes, that's kind of weird. At any rate, you can consider yourself one step closer to cyborg annihilation thanks to a company called
Sarcos and its semi-scary exoskeleton -- which will make any regular old soldier into a Terminator-like killing machine (as far as we can tell). Sure, they demo the unit lifting heavy equipment and reducing fatigue of the user, but we know what this thing is
really for -- and it doesn't involve food drops. Check the video after the break to have your mind shattered into a million delicious pieces.
posted Nov 25th 2007 4:02AM
Engadget, what are you doing up past your bedtime?
But I'm glad they did... That was a great video!
oh HELLS ya
Where do I sign up to get my Mark I MJOLNIR armor?
lol i know right!
did anyone notice at about 2:25 (in the clip) that one of the soldiers looked like a marine from halo?
It's gonna be a while until we'll see those uber super suits from Crysis.
Thats what i was just thinking - those things are hardly bulky at all and just look bad ass - this thing looks really massive...
i gotta get one of those.
i do like that master chief cover they had on display. walk around like a total bamf.
That was exactly what I was thinking...
Better yet, when are they going to come out with anything like they had in Aliens?
They already have those things...they're called steady-cam mounts. Been around since the Rocky 1.
I think Nate was referring to the power loader Ripley used against the Queen alien, not the smart gun (steady-cam thing). Am I right, Nate?
@ nate i went to seattle to be with family over thanksgiving break, so whale i was up there i went to the sci fi museum near seattle center. and they had the exo-skeleton there. needless to say, it was awesome! oh and they had the queen alien right next to it, but the security guard stopped me before i could get a picture with my phone.
When are they gonna come out with that robot-loader that Ripley uses?
Yep, Halo .01
Pfft. Halo my butt.
Starship Troopers 0.1
If you're going to make a reference, go back to one of the canonical references of the genre, not some trite video game.
you're kidding right? Starship troopers invented the genre? haha.
OUCH.
That was like a drive by shooting. An Ice Burn even.
If I was KJMoon I'd change my name to something else or go to some other tech website.
Wow. I'm still stunned.
Yes, a book is much more canonical with reality than a videogame.
The earliest fictional powered armor is NOT Starship Troopers, good as that novel is. E.E. Smith came up with it in 1937, in the Lensman books. Go bother someone else John, you parade-rainer.
Sorry to rain on your attempt to be a smart ass Blake Bowen, but the first true sci-fi reference to powered armor comes from the grandfather of sci-fi, H.G. Wells in "War of the Worlds". The Martians all wear powered armor. In fact the Martians had be using powered armor for so long they could barely do anything without it.
Get your facts straight before you attack someone else
I never said Starship Troopers invented the genre,I said it was one of, if not the, canonical references of the genre. There's a world of difference between them.
Halo, however, is just riding on the coat tails of TONS of other works in the genre.
- One part of Wikipedia says "The first citable examples of powered suits were the Fat Man underwater suits (with mechanical pantograph arms and a propulsion system), which debuted in Tom Swift and His Jetmarine (1954)".
- And another part of Wikipedia says: "Powered armour as popularised in Starship Troopers can also be traced back to The War of the Worlds; indeed, Heinlein's novel can be seen as a response to Wells'".
- So, either Wikipedia is inconsistent (shock, horror!) or powered armour isn't a powered suit.
- I just out-geeked myself and need to now visit the real world, get a girlfriend/life, etc...
lol John:
John is master chief's real name...
Doesn't Starcraft predate Starship Troopers? Cause I'm getting a mega-firebat vibe from this suit.
Tim: I don't think Starcraft was around in 1959, no. :-)
now if only Engadget would give away one of *these*..
now it just needs giant claws and a bright yellow coat of paint
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6819944270491169097&hl=en
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.
It's more like Alien than Terminator at the moment, then it'll be more Halo, before it'll become Terminator.
Mind you, it sounds like it's built (at the mo) for the exact same reasons as the Alien missile loader.
I agree, this seems pointless for soldiers on the battlefield at the moment -- see the pic of the guy holding the gun? How awkward would it be to use the arms with that gun there? And what would you need the arms for?
Cargo loading and hauling, however, would be a great application for this...
well think about it, if it reduces fatigue then if soldiers wore it on the battle field they could run harder and faster for longer, maybe even have faster reaction time (if the machine helped you move quicker than one normally could) obviously its just a prototype so it will most likely be changed a lot. but it would prove useful even if it saved one person. right?
sure, it's only a first step, but the artificial intelligence the military is developing in a separate project will be able to complete the necessary R&D for a terminator much quicker than puny human scientists. i think they'll thank us for having invented most of the basic technologies for them, and then walk on our skulls.
Hey, pete. It's just a mockup, as they said, the arms float, and could probably be covered in bulletproof armor on top of that to allow additional cover.
On top of that, you could have the gun set so that it clips directly into the robot arm, and this would buffer you from the recoil as well as allowing you to carry even heavier guns with a more damaging payload. You could practically have one of these things armed with antitank or anti aircraft missiles.
Yeah - all they have to figure out is a portable power supply to get rid of that HUGE umbilical cord currently attached to it and this could actually be of some military use. Fat chance. So really, this thing could be useful anywhere they've never heard of a fork-lift truck...
well like they said in the video, you could find plenty of work for a machine like this on an aircraft carrier.
well, as you might have heard in the end, the cord isnt for power. its a safetycord.
I think that the the tether was not just for safety. Seems it may be for power and possibly a link back to a computer.
They didn't mention when these are first gonna come out. My guess is that it'll be at least 1 or 2 years. There's gonna be alot of 'bugs' in the beginning. For them to become durable, stable, mainstream, it will take at least 5 to 10 years. What's the best time to start buying Sarcos shares? How far is SKorea with their developments? These are interesting times! There's alot of money to be made :)
Too late, Sarcos got bought up by Raytheon this year.
you've got it all wrong Joshua, these are what we'll be using against the inevitable robot invasion.
Just strap a couple miniguns to it with back mounted ammo? HOLD THE DOCK!!
Cool indeed, if thought of in any positive, say non combat use. But indeed, as Engadget says....has anyone of you thought of the implications of these things being in use and your house gets raided by them (in autonomous mode) in say, twenty years?
Time for those robot laws to be set in!
I'm from Texas. If an autonomous robot busts into my (no doubt flying, since this is the future) house, then I'm gonna blow it's CPU off with my heavily armed home-defense E-Frame. :D
Just fricken awesome!
scary
Humans + 20 years = Terrans.
Think we'll make up with the Russians by then so they can drive our battlecruisers?
Russians piloting Battlecruisers? Only if we can get the rednecks to drive the siege tanks.
Oh yeah and we better get started on researching the Yamato Gun at the Physics Lab now.
Yamato Gun? omg, I had no idea there was anybody else who would remember that reference :)
You mean the wave-motion gun?
haha whatever, push that guy on his back and watch him try to get up
you guys have to much imagination, this is far off from being little more than a portable forklift, give it a couple years they might have something to show by then + saying it can run is stupid, I jog faster than that
Chur to the Churr
-Stevie
he was only demoing the movements, not the speed.
you've obviously never used a tickle me Elmo. They fall over and stand up on their own just fine
God you're like must be sad to not consider this even remotley interesting.
@lord_of_hair @ Nov 25th 2007 7:03AM
"haha whatever, push that guy on his back and watch him try to get up
you guys have to much imagination, this is far off from being little more than a portable forklift, give it a couple years they might have something to show by then + saying it can run is stupid, I jog faster than that"
It looked to have excellent stability and easy to balance, plus it has the ability to lift several hundred pounds. Wha tmake syou think, in your infinite wisdom, that he couldn't stand back up? Also, it may well have advanced gyro stabilization, indicated by the fact the despite the units own weight, he was able to stand and bounce on one foot with realtive ease, as well as pivot and lift while on one foot.
Given the weight it can lift and the incredible range of motion it displays, I see no difficulty in picturing him simply standing up. Also, I seriously doubt you could push that guy on his back. It's quite likely that if you tried, you'd be getting the favor returned to you as he ever-so-gently nudged you with 300lbs of force sending you to the floor.
As far as speed; it's not a motorcycle, it's a power suit, dumbass. The fact that he can lift a couple hundred pounds in an eyeblink twist-and-lift maneuver and job across a hangar to perhaps, say, lift a humvee off of you, I'd say it's fairly impressive. More maveuverable than a typical forklift and with much more finesse.
As a prototype, it's damned impressive. Even if it always required a power-tether, within a hangar or warehouse environment, it's still extremely useful given it's outrageous versatility and range of motion. It's amazing that some people have no notion of reality given that they have only ever experienced fantasy and fiction and can't extract themselves into the real world. It's a clea rindication of who is a rational adult and who is an inexperienced child (or posesse sonly the mental faculties of one).
Pretty damn impressive ! I'll be waiting for the Engadget giveaway. In 2038.
What are the chances of me getting on if I put it on my Christmas list? :P
If they run Windows will they get pwned and be controllable en masse from an IRC channel?
I for one welcome our new exo-skeleton zombie overlords!
You will only welcome them for about 15 minutes, then their batteries will wear out. Seriously, you can build anything you want, but making this thing portable is a far bigger challenge than making it work. Battery technology has a long, long way to go to catch up, so unless they want to put a gas tank and an engine on the back of this thing, it's not going very far.
I for one welcome our new robotic Ov....
oh whatever.
Eventually, everyone will have to wear these to support their fat selves.
Nah, we'll have some hover-belts like Baron Harkonnen. (Creepy incestuous pedophilia not included.)
I gotta get me one of those with one of them HALO skins
Dont want to get into a boxing fight with one of them :/
The MJOLNIR's had too much robotic enhancement, they broke the user's limbs before the Spartan project came along. Sign me up for the Spartan project, as John 117. =D
urrr....is that what's on your arrest record with the vice squad? John 117? :-o
This reminds me of those Warhammer 40,000 suits I used to paint when I was a child. I especially was frightened by the few words at the end. Step into the machine and become superhuman, step out of it and it becomes a humanoid robot. What's their stock ticker symbol?
I'd strap a Jet Pack on one of these, a missile launcher and a machine gun to build one of these.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/celloc/92345907/
great(!) yet another way to kill each other.
Considering we can't even afford good boots for most ground combatants, the robot army fear is a long, long ways away. And totally agree with Ben Holmes. Let's see some power draw specs on this. Once we know that (which they must know already, obviously), then we'll know how impossible the power backpack is. Unless it's running JP8 and spewing out exhaust...
to expand on both of your points.. by the time they get in the field we will have developed portable cold fusion.
Amen to that, brother.
I'm actually thinking this could help a lot of people with disabilities.
Help a lot of people with disabilities... crush cars with their bare hands?
I just think it's sad that the US makes robots with the intention to kill whereas Japan makes them to help people.
If youve watched Gundam, you would know that thats what the Japanese are building towards. Giant killing machines. You gotta start from somewhere, and that somewhere is ladybugbot cleaning train station bathrooms.
Wow, impressive! This technology could be useful in other areas of course, not just in the military sector.
Mach III with repulsor rays up next.
I think these will have battlefield implications. If the suit can carry so much weight and still function, that weight can be mostly armor.
Imagine a squad of these, having armor that can resist small arms and RPGs with ease, and each member is armed with a 240 or something better. The mission for this would be very specific, but I think these suits would be an asset to the DOD.
Yeah.... autonomous.... end of humanity as we know it, here we come.
Now we just need to get Sigourney Weaver into one of these things.
Hmm, so the mexicans that carry the cables behind you, how will that work if they are in the army AND illegals?
well if u listened to the entire video you would know that it will be battery powered and one of the lines was just a tether so in case something went wrong it wouldnt be a huge disaster.
You guessed right, I didn't have the sound on, but seriously, it isn't hard to understand that you need a lot of power, not sure how much you can trust on batteries, although I guess they can use hydrogen or even decaying isotopes, in the military industrial machinery.
Pretty nice how much the reactionspeed and general speed has improved over time for these experimental exoskeleton things btw, already better than some older sciencefiction!
wow, with nearly an unlimited weight capacity, imagine what kind of crazy weapons manufacturers could develop! Yeah... BFG. the battlefield of the future is going to look like an anime!
scary
This thing is great!
See, the problem with these things is while they're cool and interesting and have a huge gee whiz factor, what they don't talk about is what the heck this thing is going to be powered by. A forklift can pick up a car, sure, but it requires a large engine and fuel to do so, something that's not so easy to carry around on your back.
There's been talk of little internal combustion engines in a backpack to generate power. The holdup still for all of these mobile nifty machines is how to power them, separate from tethers, for a long deployment. Until those problems are solved, these are just pretty toys.
Crossbreed this with the design path of aerial drones and we might be looking at "flying, robotic soldiers" proceeded by squadrons of stealth fighters and bombers.
No need to cross breed. Work on autonomous fighters and bombers has started. I mean, you already got the bomber drones.
This is still cool regardless of it being practical or not. You could have a few of these in your platoon and tiny drones being the eyes and ears on the field. Combine that with a drone in the sky with heavier weapons. A small team of hi tech warriors could really level the landscape.
So I'm assuming we have an EMP bomb now right?
PS. Yeah it is kinda sad that American robotics is focused on military application and from what we've seen Japanese robotics is focused on helping the average Joe. Nm, it's depressing.
i have two questions:
1) HOw much!?
2) where do i send my resume to U.S. Robotics?
master chief?
So can they super jump?
What WOULD be the mobile powersource for these things? The MJOLNIR just goes ahead and uses a small nuclear reactor... I don't think LIPos would even come close.
All of your who are saying it's self-powered, the video says "it is currently Tethered AND has a safety harness"... the tether provides the power. It's that big black cable that the assistant is carrying around in the back. The safety harness is connected to the top of the backpack.
I guess another question is whether they're planning on putting feedback on these things. Unfortunate if you accidentally punch through something and didn't feel it, so you kept going.
Sarcos... love the name...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcophagus
-Carl
I would LOVE to know how expensive those are! Seems impractical to equip all soldiers right now, but over time, with every new technology, the price drastically drops! [Remember 900 dollar DVD players that are now like 35 bucks?]
I could use one of those to chop wood and stack it.
Plus out the wheat fields I know lots of guys could use one to throw bales onto the trailer.
And maybe a couple of them available at Home Depot to load cement bags in the back of the pick up.
And my farmer friend could pick up his cows and pigs and bring them into the barn...
Reminds me a lot of that "bear suit" that was developed by that inventor guy. He ended up having a lot of money problems and sold it on eBay.
Who cares about what use it can do?
I want to see how hard it can punch a man, how far it can throw a man, this could totally be a completley new martial art.
Time to join the marines and become a superrobotwarrior!
Blizzard Entertainment has been contracted to provide a troop control interface for the Joint Chiefs.