Thursday, February 4, 2010

Robotic Suit Gets Me That Much Closer to Being a Real-Life Iron Man [Robots]

The scientists who created the Muscle Suit may say that it's to help health care workers lift patients, but we both know that its real purpose is to help me lift cars, and throw them at evildoers.

Okay, so maybe the technology's not at superhero levels quite yet. The Muscle Suit—created at the Kobayashi Lab at the Tokyo University of Science—is a "wearable robot" that comes in two versions: one that augments the muscles in your lower back, which is great for workers who have to repeatedly lift heavy objects, and one for your upper body that allows you to lift about 110 pounds without any effort from your arm muscles. It's a similar concept to the HAL-5 robot suit, except lighter and geared toward specific tasks. If only that specific task were clobberin' baddies. The best part is that a practical version is expected to be available sometime early next year. [CrunchGear, Network World]


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