Robotic suit amplifies human strength [art.suit.ap. jpg]
Rex Jameson stretches in a robotic soldier suit that can multiply
its wearer's strength and endurance.
(AP) -- Rex Jameson bikes and swims regularly, and plays tennis
and skis when time allows.
But the 5-foot-11, 180-pound software engineer is lucky if he
presses 200 pounds -- that is, until he steps into an
"exoskeleton" of aluminum and electronics that multiplies his
strength and endurance as many as 20 times.
With the outfit's claw-like metal hand extensions, he gripped a
weight set's bar at a recent demonstration and knocked off
hundreds of repetitions.
Once, he did 500.
"Everyone gets bored much more quickly than I get tired," Jameson
said.
Jameson -- who works for robotics firm Sarcos Inc. in Salt Lake
City, which is under contract with the U.S. Army -- is helping
assess the 150-pound suit's viability for the soldiers of
tomorrow.
The suit works by sensing every movement the wearer makes and
almost instantly amplifying it.
The Army <
http://topics. edition.cnn. com/topics/ u_s_army>
believes soldiers may someday wear the suits in combat, but it's
focusing for now on applications such as loading cargo or
repairing heavy equipment. Sarcos is developing the technology
under a two-year contract worth up to $10 million, and the Army
plans initial field tests next year.
Before the technology can become practical, the developers must
overcome cost barriers and extend the suit's battery life.
Jameson was tethered to power cords during his demonstration
because the current battery lasts just 30 minutes.
But the technology already offers evidence that robotics can
amplify human muscle power in reality -- not just in the realm of
comic books and movies like the recently debuted "Iron Man,"
about a wealthy weapons designer who builds a high-tech suit to
battle bad guys.
"Everybody likes the idea of being a superhero, and this is all
about expanding the capabilities of a human," said Stephen
Jacobsen, chief designer of the Sarcos suit.
The Army's exoskeleton research dates to 1995, but has yet to
yield practical suits. Sarcos' technology sufficiently impressed
Raytheon Co., however, that the Waltham, Massachusetts- based
defense contractor bought Sarcos' robotics business last
November. Sarcos also has developed robotic dinosaurs for a
Universal Studios' "Jurassic Park" theme park ride.
Jack Obusek, a former colonel now with the Army's Soldier
Research Development and Engineering Center in the Boston suburb
of Natick, foresees robot-suited soldiers unloading heavy
ammunition boxes from helicopters, lugging hundreds of pounds of
gear over rough terrain or even relying on the suit's
strength-enhancing capabilities to make repairs to tanks that
break down in inconvenient locations.
Sarcos' Jacobsen envisions factory workers someday using the
technology to perform manual labor more easily, and firefighters
more quickly carrying heavy gear up stairwells of burning
buildings. Disabled people also may find uses for the technology,
he said.
"We see the value being realized when these suits can be built in
great numbers for both military and commercial uses, and they
start coming down in cost to within the range of the price of a
small car," said Jacobsen.
He declined to estimate how much the suit might cost in mass
production.
But cost isn't the only obstacle. For example, developers
eventually hope to lengthen the suit's backpack battery's life
and tinker with the suit's design to use less energy. Meanwhile,
the suit can draw power from a generator, a tank or helicopter.
And there are gas engines that, while noisy, small enough to fit
into the suit's backpack.
"The power issue is probably the No. 1 challenge standing in the
way of getting this thing in the field," Obusek said.
But he said Sarcos appears to have overcome the key challenge of
pairing super-fast microprocessors with sensors that detect
movements by the body's joints and transmit data about them to
the suit's internal computer.
Much as the brain sends signals to tendons to get muscles to
move, the computer sends instructions to hydraulic valves. The
valves mimic tendons by driving the suit's mechanical limbs,
replicating and amplifying the wearer's movements almost
instantly.
"With all the previous attempts at this technology, there has
been a slight lag time between the intent of the human, and the
actual movement of the machine," Obusek said.
In the demonstration, the bulky suit slowed Jameson a bit, but he
could move almost normally.
When a soccer ball was thrown at him, he bounced it back off his
helmeted head. He repeatedly struck a punching bag and, slowly
but surely, he climbed stairs in the suit's clunky aluminum
boots, which made him look like a Frankenstein monster.
"It feels less agile than it is," Jameson said. "Because of the
way the control laws work, it's ever so slightly slower than I
am. And because we are so in tune with our bodies' responses,
this tiny delay initially made me tense."
Now, he's used to it.
"I can regain my balance naturally after stumbling -- something I
discovered completely by accident."
Learning was easy, he said.
"It takes no special training, beyond learning to relax and trust
the robot," he said.
