There she is...isn't she a beauty? Steve Jacobsen along with a team of engineers at Sarcos Robotics (Recently bought out by the major defense company, Raytheon) is the mastermind and creator behind this revoluationary project,. First introduced in mid-2008, the Iron Man suit has been a modern marvel that is still under advanced testing and improvement. The XOS is unarguable the most advanced exoskeleton ever created. Creating a human controlled 'robot' of this stature has been a dream of the military's for the past 40 years, and under the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), Jacobsen along with the rest of his team was granted millions of dollars to make this dream into reality.
A large portion of the inspiration for such a project comes directly from the creators of IronMan, directly out of the comic books. Jacobsen and his team often look to the old comics as inspiration for their madness, and comic fanatics and writers are all saying the same thing, "This is a real life Iron-Man."
XOS (Iron-Man Exoskeleton) is built around some of the most advanced technology of our time. However, the people behind the Darpa Operation had a wish list that was rather large. They wanted suits that would allow soldiers to run and hike for miles without ever experiencing fatigue, using weapons that would normally take more than one person to wield, and allow your average soldier to carry hundreds of pounds of wieght effortlessly for hours.
One of the biggest challenges with creating such as suit was the ability for the suit to respond to forces applied within it and read these forces thousands of times per second. Furthermore, finding microprocessors that had the ability to turn these forces into movement instantly. There could not be any lag in the system or else the operator of the suit would feel as though he/she were moving through water.
Check out how these things work:
"How to Lift 200 Pounds Like It Was 2: The XOS works similar to a human appendage. When we perform a bicep curl, the muscle fibers in our upper arm contract, pulling on tendons that lift our forearm. In the XOS, a sensor in the handle detects a force as the operator moves his arm. The sensor’s data goes to the computer, which calculates how to move the exoskeleton to minimize the strain on the user’s hand. These instructions go to a series of valves that control the flow of high-pressure hydraulic fluid to cylinder actuators in the joints. The fluid moves the cylinders, which move the cables attached to them, acting as tendons and pulling on the robotic limbs. The XOS has 30 actuators, each controlling a different joint." -Kevin Hand http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-04/building-real-iron-man?page=2
Alright, so this design won't exactly let you jump across the rooftops of a house or run at lightning speeds, but still, this design has shown some serious signs of improvement. This thing could actually work in the near future, as Darpa has agreed to grant Raytheon and Jacobsen another $10 million dollar grant over the next two years. What will we see next??
Cheers,
Pat
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-04/building-real-iron-man?page=3
This was not the first time that I have read about the development of a real life "iron man" suit. I think this is an awesome concept and I am excited to see where this technology will go. Fatigue of soldiers is a big problem and these suits will help them save a great deal of energy. One of the issues not discussed in this blog, that I feel is just as important as agility, is armor. A suit that can help a soldier run while exerting the energy of walking, or turn a 200 pound weight into 20 pounds is great. Imagine the military advantage of having a soldier that could preform these duties, with protection from fire. It would have to be a ductile outer covering (to allow free movement) that is resistant enough to protect from gun fire. We may be a ways out from this technology but I am sure this is something that is being considered in the development of this suit.
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