•        Revamped Iron Man suit unveiled
        •        "I feel like me, only a faster, stronger version"
        •        "Desperately needed" for military use
US military tech firm Raytheon Sarcos is living the dream.
As long as that dream is to don a mechanical suit, smash through bits of thick pine and press a hundred kilos just for fun.

And let's face it - who doesn't want to be Iron Man?

Since the Marvel superhero's arrival in cinemas, progress toward recreating his exoskeleton has been, well, steady.

Geriatric Japanese farmers gathered radishes with the benefit of the Power Assist Suit.

US soldiers eagerly awaited their HULC arms.
And Raytheon Sarcos itself beat them all to the punch with its original XOS 1 back in 2008, which, unfortunately, required plugging in if it was required for any longer than 40 minutes.

All of which were mildly impressive, but not exactly giving soldiers the capacity to blast of to the rescue of poor villagers terrorised by rogue warlords at a moment's notice.

Raytheon Sarcos, to its credit, looks like sticking to the job at hand, although the lure of millions of dollars in funding from the US military no doubt makes it more attractive.

Yesterday, it unveiled to the world XOS 2, the upgrade that it says confines XOS 1 to the "proof of concept" bin.

XOS 2, it says, is lighter, stronger and faster than its predecessor, "yet it uses 50 per cent less power and its new design makes it more resistant to the environment".

It's actually come up with two designs, one of which is strapped to the lower body and does away with the power cord.

For proper heavy lifting - and back injuries are apparently a genuine problem for soldiers - the power cord remains, but the flexibility and power has been ramped up several-fold. 

"People wonder if I feel like Iron Man when I suit up," Raytheon Sarcos test engineer Rex Jameson said.

"I can’t speak for Tony Stark, but when I’m in the suit I feel like me, only a faster, stronger version of me.

"Given that his character lives in a California mansion and owns a stable of very fast race cars, that's probably as close as we'll come to a shared experience."

Raytheon Sarcos vice president of Operations Dr Fraser Smith said that military interest in exoskeletons is at the stage where getting them deployed is "inevitable".

"They are desperately needed," he said.

"With a sustained commitment, they could be in place within five years."
Link here:
http://www.news.com.au/technolog ... rfro0-1225930857697

Strap on a gatling gun and it could be one of the human defenders in Matrix Revolutions.

HA
got such a far far way to go
but i love the steps they are taking

It looks to me like the nite owl II exoskeleton suit from Alan Moore's watchman comic series.

we have tons of technology to make cutting edge weapons.  but most are not economically feasible & great on a scale basis.  i would say 5 yrs is a tough thing to get thru

It is stupid!

Infantry still exist in modern warfare because of several things:

They are comparatively cheap compared to advanced weapon systems
They are completely expendable compared to advanced weapons
They are self repairing and are pretty damned effective when equipped right.

If you start putting them in battlemech suits they are like tanks expensive and need shit loads of maintenance, you realise modern tanks are pretty fragile. Russian tanks don't need it so much but western tanks you need to spent 10-20 hours maintaining them for every 1 hour of combat duty they are used for! Because they are in effect performance machines!

Finally big mech suits like that just make big easy targets.

so funny, i guess all the government stimulus has come to this.

if after centuries of warfare, why would the US army which has been the forefront of military warfare not dress their soldiers up as a tin man haha