HAL Mech Suit Hits Production, To Increase Human Strength Tenfold

HAL and Cyberdyne togther?

Synchronicity or coincidence?

Maybe Charles Fort was right when he though there was some kind of cosmic trickster and the cosmos indeed has a morbid sense of humor.

Originally posted by Shere Khaan

Originally posted by merka
The suit obviously isnt a complete exoskeleton, but its really cool nonetheless. I find it odd that the military isnt all over it, when something like this come out they should already have full power armor...

The army have their versions coming along quite nicely.

What is holding up a lot of this technology is decent batteries.

Looks neat, but I dont see how that can be a good military version... The way its hanging from the air indicate that it cannot support its own scrawny exoskeleton. Not very good if you want to put a ton of armor plating on it.

reply to post by merka


The reason it's attached to a cable is only as a precaution. They were doing rigorous agility drills and just didn't want the suit to fall and damage in case. This was explained in another news video for this version of the military suit.

If you see the video the OP linked to the guy wearing the suit from the Japanese fell over many times during testing earlier versions.

Personally I think the Japanese one originally posted about seems much more practical and efficient. I think the military tho are focusing on a different need. Their bigger and bulkier prototype will more then likely be outfitted with armor and other military gadgets. They already have a design idea to have it look like the suits from the game Halo.











[edit on 12-4-2009 by zarlaan]

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse
The one thing about this is that the government will now have a suit that will make certain troops almost completely invincible. Do we really want this?

That may be true but only to a degree..
There is quite a bit of pretty lethal weaponry in the U.S. Arsenal. Send out a bunch of idiots in Japanese robo-suits they're still gonna get blown into meat chunks by whatever weapons our forces see fit.. MLRS, GPS-guided artillery, cluster bombs, cruise-missiles, air-launched stand-off weapons, etc.. Having a bunch of enemy infantry in robotic suits wouldn't decrease the effectiveness of our own arsenal (or the effectiveness of our military in general).

It might if modern warfare regularly involved hand-to-hand combat. But it doesn't. Other than that, having 10 times normal human strength isn't going to do you much good against, say, an apache helicopter. I would think even our modern infantry fighting force would be able to do the job. A grenade launcher, a tank, even 1 guy with a berret 50 caliber rifle from good distance will still pretty much wipe out a bunch of morons lumbering around in robo-suits like this.. It's a neat idea but I see the new robo-suit as a pretty unfeasible weapons system/platform..

I am not exactly an expert authority on modern technology but I did work in munitions for the U.S. Air Force for over 6 years. Honestly, with the kind of black-budget money our government has been tossing out over the last decade or two, I'd be surprised if the U.S. military hasn't built their own versions of these suits. They may have toyed with the idea but with all the other mind-boggling, destructive weapons in our arsenal I just don't think they would find it very feasible either. There are much better, more effective, ways of spending taxpayer money for more feasible weapons R&D. Just my opinion.

-ChriS

I thought I would also add this.. It makes alot more sense to me (don't know about you guys) that if you were gonna spend this kind of money on robo-suits for human beings, wouldn't you just build a frikkin battlefield robot from the very beginning? That would be much more feasible. If they get blown to pieces, it's just a robot.

Also, on the batteries thing that was mentioned, that may be changed with some recent discoveries. Scientists at MIT recently built a new battery that uses a genetically engineered viruses and carbon nanotubes. How it works on a small scale is pretty complex from what I've read. Michio Kaku said recently it could actually lead to a new revolution in electronics. Since the battery is water-based it is completely non-toxic too (a problem we've had with normal lithium batteries).

MIT Develops Virus-Powered Car Battery

These virus-built batteries can be created cheaply using an environmentally benign process, tout the same energy capacity as state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries, and may one day be used to power everything from personal electronic devices to hybrid vehicles.

Viral battery breakthrough

Belcher's team was able to engineer a virus that self-assembles anode and cathode ends of the battery (the electrodes which move electricity in and out of the battery). The virus acts like a miniature machine, bringing together commonly available iron and phosphate molecules into a stiff lattice structure. The virus is attached to a carbon nanotube which then conducts electrons into the battery.

These new batteries have the same energy storage capacity as regular lithium batteries, but would be much less energy-intensive to produce and almost totally nontoxic, solving one of the greatest problems lithium batteries now face -- safe disposal.

This technology might even lead to much more powerful, much long-lasting batteries too.

-ChriS

[edit on 12-4-2009 by BlasteR]

Pretty cool. The HAL suit and other exo-skeletons have been on the web for a few years now and even in some magazines.

As some other people have said, if this is what they are parading around for the public to see, what do they have that's still classified?

This could just be the tip of the iceberg.

I don't believe that powered body armour is that useless. Sure there will always be weapons that can breach the armour, but it's the same principle as wearing ballistic protection currently. It doesn't stop everything but it certainly saves a proportion of soldiers.

Besides it is not only the defenses that are upgraded but the weapon systems as well. Directed energy weapons will need a heap of energy and may be heavy (at first) these suits can become mobile weapons platforms with the ability to carry enough batteries to feed the power.

As for robotics I thought it was quite telling in one of the videos that they mentioned an autonomous mode for the suits. What better than an autonomous robot that can double as protection for infantry?

Many have said it but if we're getting shown this now, what have they got behid the scenes?

Anyone seen the game Crysis? Never played it myself, but it's basically about a one man army, the Spec Op wears a nano suit, no exoskeleton, just lots of 'muscles' that enable the wearer to run faster, jump further and lift silly weights. Either way, it's asolutely sick.

I mention it, because years ago (before Crysis I may add), I read about these same principles being experimented with, if memory serves, it was using the concept of 'frog's legs', I would like to know how far they have gotten with that.

Also...

I have a friend that used to steal chocolate bars from our local shop when we were kids by waving his right hand in the air, shouting "look at me, look at me.", the shopkeeper would be looking at his hand in utter confusion as his left hand grabbed chocolate.

He put them back after, but it was to show how easy it is to distract people with a show.

This IMO, is exactly what they're doing.

EMM

a lot of people have mentioned the terminator link to cyberdyne, but another potentially prophetic movie link is in the anime movie Vaxille, where "Daiwa Heavy Industries" uses nanotechnology to essentially turn the entire Japanese population into synthetic life forms, cyborgs as it were.