Building the Real Iron Man

sexy.

I'd rather have a HAL-5. Do an image search for it, it's pretty awesome. And it's been around for years.

=O wow
Just out of curiosity, if you were lifting weights in the suit, would that build your muscle? If so, it could help people in rehabilitations to lift like a bajillion pounds and gain there muscle back, or help me show off to the ladies :)

Ewok:

It wouldnt matter if you could lift a million pounds in the suit, you gain muscle on how much YOU lift. So if the suit makes lifting a million pounds equivalent to lifting 10 pounds... you might as well just lift a 10 pound weight because its the same.

^_^

Hmm thats pretty cool. I can see why the military is paying out-the wazoo for this thing. Personaly i think it should be used for construction, to save on energy and only have to endanger 3 men instead of 50.

Also i dont like the idea of wasting it fighting battles, it seems like kind of a waste if u ask me.

And the disabled thing is a really great idea if you can make it less noticeable, and or bulky.

-Word.of.Warcraft

I like the idea of an exo suit, but using hydrualics to move the limbs seems outdated for something so advanced. when will they come up with some type of synthetic muscle that minipulates the human muscle better adn faster.

I think idea is good and maybe not a perfect but still it is a
beginning /in progress I mean/.
Maybe when that apparatus have more good connection with
human body and they work in symbiosis...

The technology is facinating, though I fear that we are moving far to slowly with advancements in science. It is taking far to long to come up with new advancements. There are not enough people that are of literal genius status or near genius status involving themselves in science. Myself, I am ashamed that I don't even know how to type or spell properly, even though I was seen as a pheonom as a child. Remember Einstein was bad with phone numbers. I need to educate myself. I fear it is coming far to late in my life, but I have to try. I spent to much time drinking beer, and not enough time diving into books. I will say this for the exo-skeleton, it is worth waiting for. The applications are going to be quite varried. I just don't want to see a college kid hitting a bong off campus meeting his death to the new rookie of the patrol squad as he rolls up and torches the poor chitlin... Ow!

CAN YOU SAY POLICE BRUTALITY?

Hey mwesty64, I dont see how hydraulics are outdated. That would be like saying I dont see why they use wheels for cars, they should hover by now. An application such as this uses quite advanced technology to sync appropriately with the movement of the body and could be used for a number of different things other than supplementing a human engaged in combat....

This is an old idea in the science fiction world going back to the 40s, 50s and 60s. If you are going to do a power suit timeline, how about mentioning Robert Heinlein's flying (or at least high-jumping) combat power suits in his original Starship Troopers novel (1959) or the power suit in the Robocop (1989) movies.

Anytime a human and a machine integrate in an intimate way to perform tasks that a human being could not perform on his or her own, (Steve Auston, The Six Million Dollar Man-1973 anyone?) you essentially have a cyborg, even if the connection is only temporary. It doesn't matter if the machine is enhancing human muscles/sensors or replacing them.

Of course the suits will eventually be used in other than military roles. It’s call “spin-off” and it has been going on since military technology started to advance from stone knives and bear skin shields. Most likely the first civilian application for the military type of power suit will be heavy construction.

However, this is not an either or situation. This technology can be applied to both civilian and military uses without taking away from either one. But I guess it’s pretty easy to talk about the use of such power suits to defend the United States and give our troops the best protection and firepower as a “waste” when your sitting safe, sound and free here in the states while someone else is doing the heavy lifting to defend you overseas, isn’t it?

It should be mentioned that power "waldo" (again, from Robert Heinlein in his 1942 short story of the same name) style mechanical "hands" are already being used for dangerous remote work and medical applications. Such manipulators can scale up or down (for delicate work like micro-surgery) the movements and apparent strength of the operator’s hands and arms. They have been used for years in the medical, chemical and nuclear industries.

One suggestion... No armor is truly impervious against the right kind of counter weapons. Even heavily armored tanks can be destroyed or penetrated with certain types of shoulder launched rockets and even high caliber rifle fire. So, there will be casualties, even amongst soldiers wearing heavily armored power suits. It might be a good idea to program the electronics in the power suit to automatically run, walk or even crawl (if the machine can still move at all) the wounded or dead combat soldier back to his own lines, once the on-board computer determines by monitoring the physical condition of the operator that the soldier in incapacitated.

This way, a wounded trooper could get medical attention as soon as possible or, at least, the body could be recovered. It would also keep the formidable weapon that the suit represents from falling into enemy hands. Biometric lock-out systems could also be used to prevent an enemy from acquiring a usable power suit.

This might be a good idea for the current crop of military tanks and armored vehicles in cases where the machine can still function, but the occupants are out of action. The robot vehicle driving systems that have won the DARPA trials could point the way to such automated recovery systems.

As mentioned above in a previous comment, you have made a serious omission in your article, "Building the Real Iron Man." You forgot to mention that master science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein envisioned powered armor suits back in 1959 in his superb novel Starship Troopers (not to be confused with the 1997 film that turned out to be a travesty by the same name allegedly based upon the book).

“A suit isn’t a space suit—although it can serve as one. It is not primarily armor—although the Knights of the Round Table were not armored as well as we are. It isn’t a tank—but a single M.I. private could take on a squadron of those things and knock them off unassisted if anyone was silly enough to put tanks against M.I. A suit is not a ship but it can fly, a little—on the other hand neither spaceships nor atmosphere craft can fight against a man in a suit except by saturation bombing of the area he is in (like burning down a house to get one flea!). Contrariwise, we can do many things that no ship—air, submersible, or space—can do.”

And it may even be possible that Heinlein was not the first one to come up with the idea.

So, let us give credit where credit is due.

As mentioned above in a previous comment, you have made a serious omission in your article, "Building the Real Iron Man." You forgot to mention that master science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein envisioned powered armor suits back in 1959 in his superb novel Starship Troopers (not to be confused with the 1997 film that turned out to be a travesty by the same name allegedly based upon the book).

“A suit isn’t a space suit—although it can serve as one. It is not primarily armor—although the Knights of the Round Table were not armored as well as we are. It isn’t a tank—but a single M.I. private could take on a squadron of those things and knock them off unassisted if anyone was silly enough to put tanks against M.I. A suit is not a ship but it can fly, a little—on the other hand neither spaceships nor atmosphere craft can fight against a man in a suit except by saturation bombing of the area he is in (like burning down a house to get one flea!). Contrariwise, we can do many things that no ship—air, submersible, or space—can do.”

And it may even be possible that Heinlein was not the first one to come up with the idea.

So, let us give credit where credit is due.

If you research back to around 1960, Mechanix Illustrated had an article about a suit of armor the Army was supposed ot be experimenting with. Their article was much more complete than this one. The suit of armor could completely seal the soldier off from the atmosphere, in the even of biological or radiation dangers. They could parachute and cut loose from the canopy 30 feet from the ground and land, They could brace themselves on a berm and act as a launching pad for a missile. They carried supersized grenades they could throw 3/4 of a mile or drop at their feet. Some time later, a scifi writer brought out a series of books about a secret group of soldiers who conducted SEAL-type missions using suits of armor the same as described in the MI article. Later, on, the series was expanded to a group of Russian soldiers in Russia's version of the suits. It seems PopSci was scooped by MI and a scifi writer.

"In it's most basic form the right to keep and bear arms is nothing less than the right to maintain the means of one's own self-defense. If a man chooses not to arm himself, that is his choice and right. It is NOT his right to force HIS choice upon ME."

This project is something I've been aware of for the better part of a decade, it's called Halo. Heard of it? Neither have the writers or editors. This piece of extraordinary hardware was ripped from Heinlein's books, copied loosely by James Cameron in Aliens, and brought to "life" by Bungie.

The writers and editors compared everything about the XOS to IronMan, when this is everything the SPARTANS (and to lesser extent ODST) are based on. The XOS has as much in common with Iron Man as a talking GPS has with Cortana.

Heinlein did not invent the concept but he was the first to truly popularize it and relaize its potential. Thus making it unacceptable to leave him out of any article on the subject

The picture in the actual Popsci magazine of what the suit might look like in a few years seemed extremely familiar. I found it similar to an early prototype of the Master Chief's armor as it appears in the game Halo: Combat Evolved for Xbox. The day when normal soldiers have Spartan combat suits might not be as far away as we think.

Seriously, if they put "Matrix Revolutions" on the exo suit timeline, why not put the SPARTAN armor from Halo? Also, the envisioned design of the future exo suit looks eerily like spartan armor, the helmet looks virtually identical to Master Chiefs.

This is an old idea in the science fiction world going back to the 40s, 50s and 60s. If you are going to do a power suit timeline, how about mentioning Robert Heinlein's flying (or at least high-jumping) combat power suits in his original Starship Troopers novel (1959) or the power suit in the Robocop (1989) movies.

Anytime a human and a machine integrate in an intimate way to perform tasks that a human being could not perform on his or her own, (Steve Auston, The Six Million Dollar Man-1973 anyone?) you essentially have a cyborg, even if the connection is only temporary. It doesn't matter if the machine is enhancing human muscles/sensors or replacing them.

Of course the suits will eventually be used in other than military roles. It’s call “spin-off” and it has been going on since military technology started to advance from stone knives and bear skin shields. Most likely the first civilian application for the military type of power suit will be heavy construction.

However, this is not an either or situation. This technology can be applied to both civilian and military uses without taking away from either one. But I guess it’s pretty easy to talk about the use of such power suits to defend the United States and give our troops the best protection and firepower as a “waste” when your sitting safe, sound and free here in the states while someone else is doing the heavy lifting to defend you overseas, isn’t it?

It should be mentioned that power "waldo" (again, from Robert Heinlein in his 1942 short story of the same name) style mechanical "hands" are already being used for dangerous remote work and medical applications. Such manipulators can scale up or down (for delicate work like micro-surgery) the movements and apparent strength of the operator’s hands and arms. They have been used for years in the medical, chemical and nuclear industries.

One suggestion... No armor is truly impervious against the right kind of counter weapons. Even heavily armored tanks can be destroyed or penetrated with certain types of shoulder launched rockets and even high caliber rifle fire. So, there will be casualties, even amongst soldiers wearing heavily armored power suits. It might be a good idea to program the electronics in the power suit to automatically run, walk or even crawl (if the machine can still move at all) the wounded or dead combat soldier back to his own lines, once the on-board computer determines by monitoring the physical condition of the operator that the soldier in incapacitated.

This way, a wounded trooper could get medical attention as soon as possible or, at least, the body could be recovered. It would also keep the formidable weapon that the suit represents from falling into enemy hands. Biometric lock-out systems could also be used to prevent an enemy from acquiring a usable power suit.

This might be a good idea for the current crop of military tanks and armored vehicles in cases where the machine can still function, but the occupants are out of action. The robot vehicle driving systems that have won the DARPA trials could point the way to such automated recovery systems.

This is an old idea in the science fiction world going back to the 40s, 50s and 60s. If you are going to do a power suit timeline, how about mentioning Robert Heinlein's flying (or at least high-jumping) combat power suits in his original Starship Troopers novel (1959) or the power suit in the Robocop (1989) movies.

Anytime a human and a machine integrate in an intimate way to perform tasks that a human being could not perform on his or her own, (Steve Auston, The Six Million Dollar Man-1973 anyone?) you essentially have a cyborg, even if the connection is only temporary. It doesn't matter if the machine is enhancing human muscles/sensors or replacing them.

Of course the suits will eventually be used in other than military roles. It’s call “spin-off” and it has been going on since military technology started to advance from stone knives and bear skin shields. Most likely the first civilian application for the military type of power suit will be heavy construction.

However, this is not an either or situation. This technology can be applied to both civilian and military uses without taking away from either one. But I guess it’s pretty easy to talk about the use of such power suits to defend the United States and give our troops the best protection and firepower as a “waste” when your sitting safe, sound and free here in the states while someone else is doing the heavy lifting to defend you overseas, isn’t it?

It should be mentioned that power "waldo" (again, from Robert Heinlein in his 1942 short story of the same name) style mechanical "hands" are already being used for dangerous remote work and medical applications. Such manipulators can scale up or down (for delicate work like micro-surgery) the movements and apparent strength of the operator’s hands and arms. They have been used for years in the medical, chemical and nuclear industries.

One suggestion... No armor is truly impervious against the right kind of counter weapons. Even heavily armored tanks can be destroyed or penetrated with certain types of shoulder launched rockets and even high caliber rifle fire. So, there will be casualties, even amongst soldiers wearing heavily armored power suits. It might be a good idea to program the electronics in the power suit to automatically run, walk or even crawl (if the machine can still move at all) the wounded or dead combat soldier back to his own lines, once the on-board computer determines by monitoring the physical condition of the operator that the soldier in incapacitated.

This way, a wounded trooper could get medical attention as soon as possible or, at least, the body could be recovered. It would also keep the formidable weapon that the suit represents from falling into enemy hands. Biometric lock-out systems could also be used to prevent an enemy from acquiring a usable power suit.

This might be a good idea for the current crop of military tanks and armored vehicles in cases where the machine can still function, but the occupants are out of action. The robot vehicle driving systems that have won the DARPA trials could point the way to such automated recovery systems.

I think that the exoskeleton looks more like something from the game Halo. It looks like a spartan a.k.a. Master Chief then Iron Man.

Jacobsen is just starting to scratch the surface people. give him a little credit for trying something like this. he has the right ideas he just needs to improve on them.

just like any invention thats created. it just take time to perfect the workin parts so that they work beautifly. yes the H- 5 suit is better so far but they have been researching this for many years. i for one won't mind being a part of steve jacobsens project. i see great things happening in the next 5-10 years. maybe even sooner.

1) my belief is that anything is possible in life. if you can imagin it, you have already takin the first step in making it a reality.

2) we ALWAYS! underestimate the future.

Jeremiah Alexander, inventor, mechanic, electrical tech, computer guru and personal trainer

who knows what goes on in the world of black technology? It is secreted for a reason. Unfortunatly, that reason is, supposedly and hopefully, technological surprise in aiding defence against armed attack from other, hostile nations! call me an optimist. Its kinda sad that radicals who may or may not be muslims, radical muslims, extremeists, or terrorists should want to harm others (but let it be noted, not all zealot extremists are what they say they are, or follow the tenents of thier claimed faiths. Thake the Mountain Meadow Massacre. Radical Mormons, in clear and distict defiance of the tenants of thier faith, murdered hundreds, and redistributed thier children...... sickening. But it was not thier religion that made them do it. It was themselves)
Also, interesting parallels w/ the SPARTAN armor. Reminds me of the Active Defence System thingy the military now has. I see it in an article in the area newspaper, and a few years later, i see it on the TV show FutureWeapons. And someone i lived with thought it was a misinformation thing by the military. What if this Spartan thing is information dissemination in a similar manner? bizarre theory, but plausibe in a certain light. By the way, has anyone heard of the A46? if you dont know, dont ask....

It seems likely to me that this technology could be used as the human end of a device to control a robot in the field. The human would see and hear what the robot does and it could use force feedback. The movements could be controlled wirelessly so that the operator could be miles away from the robot in the field.

fascinating idea Sketchy J. But what about signal lag, limited sensory scope, and overall lack of total human sensation? Takes a human to take care of a human's interest. Though i love robots. They are very cool. The one problem i have is with the name. Comes from a Latin, greek, or roman word for "slave"

I hate to be an arse, but the parallels with the Spartan armour are all well and good, but the powered suit idea has been around for alot longer than that in computer games, Half-life, released 3 years before Halo, has a powered suit that the player wears that stores weapons, allows firing of much larger guns than a standard man, enables longer jumping, armour from bullets, etc etc.

The earliest game character I can think of off the top of my head was the robotic-suited equipped Hitler in Wolfenstein 3D from 1992!

"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile"

The cross section showing about when parts of the suit would be made... what really caught my attention was the health bar on the screen. A FREAKING HEALTH BAR! The military has decided to make life a video game now. Still, that's a ingenious invention

العاب بنات -
العاب طبخ
- العاب باربي
-

Darn son that Fatching awesome
i want that suit

فيلم بنات وموتسكيلات فيلم كامب
فيلم شارع 18 فيلم ورقه شفره فيلم احنا اتقابلنا قبل كده فيلم ليله البيبى دول فيلم الريس عمر حرب
فيلم على جنب يا اسطى فيلم كابتن هيما

well, ischlesi...you seem to have covered exactly what i was going to say...(thanks-you saved me from needing to type that long of a paper). That was a GREAT idea about making the suit crawl away from the battle to seek medical attention for the soldier inside. Normally i'd put in some counter point or whatever..but ,like i said before, you got it all for me. thanks.

c-ya l8er

Looks like a more realistic possibility of a Master Chief than Tony Stark blasting into hypersonic speeds. Could happen within 30 years. Armor clad skeleton with movement at every joint and the flexibility to maneuver on the battlefield. Halo tech is not very far off and may happen within our lifetime.

i suggest that they should replace those funny hands of the exoskeleton that looked like pliers or what. I've read about those polymers that tighten up when fired with electricity. i guess it would give much strength to the suit to carry heavy things since those rubber experts may develop that rubber with excessive strength and endurance that it will not tear up once it carries a heavy object.

if they are indeed building a suit, don't mind that "Iron Man" stuff. build from what you have right now.

and next stuff, should the helmet be like the one on a kind of helicopter the US has. the one that makes the machine gun move following the same direction from where the pilot is looking. i guess you guys can make a helmet that would respond to the movement of the eyes.

and the suit itself, i think it would be better if you will use the strongest but the lightest metal the earth has right now.

about the flying stuff, i'm still trying to figure out an environment friendly solution. LOL

i have my own design and you bright minds of the world can contact me. i guess i can do it if all scientists would help. hehe'

Not that I want to be rude or sound like a jerk (or super duper duper nerdy) but its actually called MJOLNIR (Pronounced Mole-ner [something along those lines, the J is silent though]) armor (after Norse Mythology, or more specificly, Thors Hammer), not spartan armor, Which was their final weapon to fight against the convenant (when i say final weapon, read the book, they get biological enhancements, which is described, I believe, as weapons to fight the convenant, from doctor halsey, and her final 'gift' was the armor).

Spartan II (thats there correct codename) more more or less just a code name for the program of training them since there young age to when they were 'combat' ready.

I could go into a really big detailed story on them, but I'll save everyone the pain of hearing me talk about Halo.

Also, there are aspects of the MJOLNIR Armor that might take more the 5-30 years to make, but i could be wrong, but the amount of energy to used to power the suite is a rediculous, the writer of the halo book actually describes why the previous suites didnt work and why the new ones did (Refrence: Halo: The Fall of Reach, and Halo: First Strike), suites like this would most likely need to be close to a field generator (did anyone notice the big power cord coming out of the guys armor [the armor from the actual article btw]), but the book could be totally scifi-ing it out, but his points seemed to make sense. A shield, well, i dont know if something like that will happen overly soon.

To 3lfd3wd:

While I'm not as adept at the Half Life, I'm pretty sure that his suite was just meant to handle radiation, and heavy lifting for the crystal type object at the begining of Half Life, it just happened to be convient that it helps him kick some bad guys face in, I also think that it wasnt really thought through (I could be wrong on this one) about carrying multiple weapons, if you look at his armor, it wasnt designed to carry weapons, it was designed for radation and all that I mentioned before. While the actual MJOLNIR armor was actually designed for a battle.

But then again, i could totally be wrong, but i think thats how it goes. (Its also late here, so I could totally be blundering around here)

PS my ideas are based off of reading the halo books and picking up things from reading, i have not done enormous amounts of reading into this stuff, if i made an error, point it out to me, just dont rip me apart please, thanks :)

Caps Lock is cruise control for cool

WELCOME to the REAL HALO

ok hopefully we are done talking about halo which is based i believe first in the video games and then backed up by the books. But the idea first originated back in the 60s in a book from an old guy who had no idea about halo, the convenant, brs, plasma rifles and such. don't get me wrong the similarities between the XOS and Halo are very similar. And i am not putting Halo down or anything, i am a gamer to and i play as well.

The XOS inventor, jacobsen, probably grew up reading the Ironman comics and that is probably one of the places he got his idea from and the rest of it just compliments XOS. And do you really think he ripped his idea off of Halo? The guy was an adult when Pong came out.

Now to the aspect of the XOS itself. The helmet is already being design by the military for jet pilots so they dont have to rely on pure eyesight to keep and eye on the enemy that dropped in behind them they can just look in behind and satellites send info to the helmet as to where the enemy and shows up on the pilots HUD. To mwesty64, the hydraulics are not outdated, they are very useful. I am always using hydraulics for ideas because they are such a good base and can you give me any other things that can lift huge masses for construction that do not use hydraulics. I think a good idea for the next version should be electric motors however you compromise the strength of the suit. But another would be magnetic joints so as to reduce friction to nil and more power would be directed to strength.

The only power i see for this suit is the power as mentioned earlier. Until a way to power the suit well and for long periods of time is perfected we will not be seeing any power suits for a long time to come. But who really knows how long that will be until that time does arrive.

I just ask that we stop comparing this reality, the XOS, to the fictional Halo. We can compare all we want but dont we want to try to make this a reality sooner and put out ideas. We act as a filter for these inventors we catch the stuff they dont see.

Congrats to Jacobsen for the first major step on the road to a better integration between man and machine.

John Steakly-------->ARMOR

Powered armor coupled with AWESOME Martial Arts!!

Army of the Future: "Consider just the potential changes that might effect the infantryman. Future soldiers may operate in encapsulated, climate-controlled, powered fighting suits, laced with sensors, and boasting chameleon-like 'active' camouflage. 'Skin-patch' pharmaceuticals help regulate fears, focus concentration and enhance endurance and strength. A display mounted on a soldier’s helmet permits a comprehensive view of the battlefield – in effect to look around corners and over hills – and allows the soldier to access the entire combat information and intelligence system while filtering incoming data to prevent overload. Individual weapons are more lethal, and a soldier’s ability to call for highly precise and reliable indirect fires – not only from Army systems but those of other services – allows each individual to have great influence over huge spaces. Under the 'Land Warrior' program, some Army experts envision a 'squad' of seven soldiers able to dominate an area the size of the Gettysburg battlefield – where, in 1863, some 165,000 men fought" (p. 62).

That has to be one of the WORST exoskeletons I either thought of or seen. There is not much protection and not very
strong at all. The military needs to rethink its standards.

I'm impressed! Iron Man for all.

Ralf
Private Vorsorge im Vergleich.
www.altersvorsorge-vergleich.net/private-altersvorsorge-vergleich.htm

I think idea is good and maybe not a perfect but it is still a beginning /in progress I mean/.Maybe when that apparatus have more good connection with human body and they work in symbiosis...

Anyway do you know the meaning of link building and its importance in the social media sites marketing ?? If no, then just click the link_____

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So, most of us are agreed that the concept has been around for years. That's great, but detracts from the fact that Mr. Jacobsen is actually trying to build a working model.

To those who criticize, hydraulics won't be used in the final product. According to online sources, Raytheon will be using some sort of contractive, metal bands (synthetic muscles, so to speak.) Mr. Jacobsen is trying to make something better than what already exists. HAL 5 only has 5:1 gain, while the proposed XOS has a 10:1 gain. The only question now is how to power it.

The only suggestions I have are: use actual gloves that are powered and put light-weight, tempered, composite armor on it with ceramic interior plates and insulated processors and servos. They probably will, but I had to mention it.

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."

-Albert Einstein

metal bands (synthetic muscles, so to speak.) Mr. Jacobsen is trying to make something better than what already exists.
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he only suggestions I have are: use actual gloves that are powered and put light-weight, tempered, composite armor on it with ceramic interior plates and insulated processors and servos. They probably will, but I had to mention it.

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In many hollywood film Iron man just make the war with many countries. I do not like this kind of weapon.
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