Matt Damon ’s latest pic , Elysium , is set 140 years in the time to come where smart set is divided between the elites , who live in a utopian orbital society , and the rest of us , who struggle in squalidness down on the major planet ’s surface . To battle this inequality , an unsung hoagie establish himself into a full - dead body prosthetic and break into the “ most secure position in the macrocosm . ” Must be one hell of a case .
The film may be both set a century and a half henceforward and pure sci - fi . but the technology that it ’s base on is very real . In fact , the moving picture ’s HULC suit ( Human Universal Load Carrier ) is tight pose after the US military machine ’s own purpose — of the same name .
“ The whole suit is just an extrapolation on current - day engineering science that the military is looking into , ” Elysium conductor Neill Blomkamptold Yahoo ! News . “ It ’s like a ‘ power assist ’ suit that helps you revoke heavier objects or parachute higher or incline faster . ”
Extrapolations are one thing . How close are we to this being a reality ?
What Are Power Suits?
Power case like the HULC , also known as powered exoskeleton or simply exosuits , are wearable machine design to augment the substance abuser ’s strength and ( at least theoretically ) agility using either electronic or pneumatic actuator . These gimmick typically employ fluid mechanics control by an onboard figurer .
In practice session , soldier assume a perfected exosuit would be able to carry century of pound of gear over inhospitable terrain at a high charge per unit of speed without breaking a perspiration . Elder care nursing staff would be able to lift and move bedridden patients without having to close them into a wheel professorship . operating surgeon could eliminate deal tremor during delicate operating theater . building crews would be able to move heavy material without swear on Stephen Crane and other heavy machinery . In short , they can change our lives forever and a day , in every imaginable way .
Unlike Luke Skywalker ’s animatronic hand or Ash ’s gauntlet , exosuits only augment live power ; they do n’t replace lose function . suppose Ripley ’s Aliens Power Loader . They also swear on outside stimuli , instead of the neural networking technique that DARPA is try out with helper assure advanced prosthetics . Lastly , you should n’t confuse exosuits with mechs like as Gundams , Gunmen , or Jaegers . Mechs are essentially humanoid vehicle , stark with cockpit and conventional control organisation . They ’re not strong-arm augments .
The First Exosuits
We ’ve been enamored with feats of superhuman strength since the cockcrow of time ( see : Samson , Hercules , Hulk , Colossus ) . But with biologic tampering being both scientifically out of reach and ethically controversial , people have been tinkering with mechanically skillful solutions since the late square-toed geological era .
In 1890 , Russian inventor Nicholas Yagin developed the first known exosuits . These passive devices used squeeze gas bladder to assist the exploiter in walk , bound and running , respectively . The first credited US exosuit inventor was Leslie C. Kelley , who debut a theoretical account in 1917 that utilized steam power and galosh ligaments to raise the wearer ’s power . These former iterations were crude at good and , while cutting edge for their day , far too cumbersome and energy intensive to be of any real habit .
It was n’t until the 1960s that the New power suit concept emerged . General Electric , exploit in conjunction with the Department of Defense , created theHardiman , a bulky contraption that looked not unlike a pair of self-propelled assemblers strapped to the substance abuser ’s back and stage . While clunky by any measure , it managed to reduce exertion by a cistron of 25 , which is quite impressive . That is , lift 250 pounds in the hydraulic suit felt like lifting 10 . It was also one of the first machine to provide a funky Modern feature article called “ strength feedback , ” to preclude the user from jam items in his clutch .
But for as promising as the Hardiman conception was , it never really panned out . It librate three quarters of a ton — nearly twice its own liftable limit — had a walking footstep that only covered 2.5 feet per second , and employed a cumbrous , wait - ride , master - striver instruction system of rules . It was a great idea , but the engineering want to make it really functional only had yet to be invented .
Hardiman was surveil first byProject Pitman , built by Los Alamos Laboratories in the sixties , and subsequently the Lifesuit in the mid-1980s . Monty Read , a US Army Ranger paralyzed during a parachute accident , add up up with the approximation for the Lifesuit after show Robert Heinlein’sStarship Troopers(specifically the bit about theMobile Infantry Power Suits ) while in recovery . He submitted his proposal to the Department of Defense , which incorporated it into its R&D endeavor over the next two decades .
By 2003 , the earlyLifesuit One(LS1 ) models were able to seamlessly match the wearer ’s pace . In 2005 , the system set theGuinness World Land Speed Distance Recordfor walk in robot courtship when Reed completed the 3 - mile Saint Patrick ’s ’ Day Dash in Seattle in just 90 minutes . Not forged for a guy with a broken back . Today , the Lifesuit ’s late iteration , the MK 14 , can take the air a mile on a full charge , and plagiarize up to 200 pounds .
The State of the Art
Getting an exosuit development project off the soil is no small feat , and as such is only really undertake by governments and top - tier defense contractors . On the military front , Sarcos and Raytheon have team up to make XOS case ; Lockheed Martin , meanwhile , has concentrated its sweat on the real - lifespan HULC suit .
On the civilian side , Cyberdyne Inc ( no notthat one ) has already developed and begun rolling out the HAL 5 ( no , not that oneeither ) for use in elder care adeptness . While none of them is quite potent enough to tackle dystopia yet , they each amount surprisingly close-fitting in their own elbow room .
The XOS Exoskeleton , primitively developed as the Wearable Energetically Autonomous Robot ( WEAR ) by Sarcos Research of Salt Lake City , is a full - body , aluminium and brand case that augments the substance abuser ’s strength and legerity . The twist itself matter just 200 pounds and allow the drug user to go up up to the same amount with a 17 - fold decrease in effort ( nobble 200 pound feed like lift less than 12 ) . The XOS trust on high - pressure fluid mechanics to perform its amazing effort of force — like punching through thee inches of wood .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdKyqA98B3 g
Lockheed ’s HULC lawsuit , on the other hand , weighs just 53 pounds but grants its user the same 200 - pound carrying capability . The power comes wish of a backpack mounted to the titanium frame , not the user . This cut down focus to the legs and back , one of the most coarse accidental injury to soldier . The fully untethered gimmick runs on an onboard battery gang , and will allow the wearer to march at 3MPH and execute short , 10 MPH burst sprints . To be fair , NFL participant can hit 25 MPH in bursts too . But they ’re a lot more hoist by the end of it .
Cyberdyn ’s Hal 5 system is an alone medical version of the exosuit . Originally developed by Dr. Sankai , a professor at Tsukuba University , it ’s been designed specifically for attend people with disabilities . The full - body suit can increase a user ’s natural strength tenfold . The Hal 5 underwent hospital trials in Japan last class , becoming the first exosuit to reach global safety certification in this preceding February .
The Next Augmented Step
With the legion reward they offer , exosuits are quickly moving towards widespread adoption — first among the military and then , eventually , by civilian industry . As bionics expertThomas Sugar , associate professor at the Department of Engineering , Arizona State University , told CNN :
In the next five year we ’re going to see more and more exoskeletons out there in practice … If you live near where I do and need to go out and hike the Grand Canyon , exoskeleton devices 10 - 15 years from now could aid you to do that .
That is , of course , is strike skill works the bugs out first . Exosuits have a number of current technical shortcomings that must be address before they can be in effect implemented , especially to the academic degree they are on the big screen .
For one affair , exosuits have to toe a frail line between structural integrity and weight savings . Exosuit innovators are faced with a choice : Steel - build systems are far stronger , but also far heavier than their aluminum twin . This makes them less likely to catastrophically fail under payload , fold up the exploiter into a bloody pretzel , but also requires far more vigour to move . The same can be say for the suit ’s joint actuator . Current hydraulic cylinders are muscular but very heavy , not to remark that the fluid they habituate are both leaden and have a habit of leaking , get out the actuator limp and useless . Pneumatic ( gas pedal powered ) actuators are a lighter - weighting choice , but are far to imprecise for this variety of work .
Even something as basic as find a suitable power supply is prove to be a second of a challenge . It ’s really the same issue every fluid twist maker — from Motorola to DARPA — currently faces : A shortage of sufficient energy capacity . Li - ion batteries are the fashionable choice but they ’re heavy , inflexible , and rather cumbersome given the few unretentive hour worth of juice they can hold . The suits could theoretically be powered by kinetic energy generation ( itself barely more palpable than vaporware ) , interior combustion engine , even steamer like the Kelley courtship from 1917 . But until we get to the next big thing in lithium air technology , we ’re going to be stuck right where we are .
last , there ’s the whole other issue in the platforms ’ reception rate . The Hardiman had a interim time of well over a second . The HULC and XOS are both far quicker than that , but they still lay out a detectable lag . “ If you look at some of the gimmick out there , they ’re actually quite hard to take the air in , ” Sugar continued to CNN . “ You ’ve got to make certain they really heighten people ’s abilities . ” Based on the Elysium trailer , the fights Matt Damon have in would require wholly fluid movement ; even fractions of a 2d turn a loss could mean dying .
But these technological shortcoming are merely protrusion in the route . As our expert prowess advances , leading to better Energy Department storage solutions , enhanced brain - to - computer interfaces ( BCI ) , and stiff , lighter metal , exosuits have the potential to become omnipresent tools for future generations . And they might just take out us up out of the rubble someday .
[ Army Technology – Wikipedia – CNN – Yahoo – Lockheed Martin ]
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