Posted on 11/23/2007 8:34:39 AM PST by Flavius
Foreplay would be interesting.
pflr
Bingo! One of my favorite books of all time (note the tag line).
Colonel, USAFR
Oh yeah! I still remember reading “Starship Troopers” as a kid. The image of Rico flying through the air with his powered armor and jet pack dropping down tactical nukes . . . it’s still with me. I can still remember I was in the top of my bunkbead with a flashlight reading it after everyone else was asleep. I LOVED it as a boy and as a man. Movie was a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a travesty of a great book.
bunkbed that is . . .
My luck, I still wouldn't be able to open the pickle jar...
Rockem Sockem Robots . . . for real . . .
Oh, sure--you can build an all-electric car as big as a thimble and with fifty-mile operable range and drive it around. Sorry, bubba, but "I" don't consider that terribly practical.
Let me clarify slightly--an all-electric car with capabilities anywhere near todays cars is flatly impossible.
There’s another problem in addition to finding an adequate, built-in electric power source, and that is the waste heat.
Even when just walking, the motors and controls in the suit are going to throw off almost a kilowatt; when doing strenuous work and powering weapons—like leaping tall buildings in a single bound and throwing something faster than a speeding bullet—that would go up an order of magnitude.
Two avenues to a solution:
1. Get controls and motors that operate at 99.5% efficiency.
Nobody has any idea how to do that.
2. Be able to maintain human skin temperature at no more than 25 C while dissipating 1 to 10 KW of electrically generated heat dissipation into an environment that may be that temperature or higher.
Nobody has any idea how to do that.
We’ll have to put Qwerty Bot up against em !
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/11/jeremy_mayers_typewriter.html
And you've just proven exactly my point. When they deliver an all electric car with capabilities equivalent to, say, todays Honda Accord, and for a price remotely near the same, give me a call.
I won't hold my breath waiting, though.
peed: up to 120 mph (193 km/h) Acceleration: 0-60 mph in 5.9 seconds Range: 100+ miles (160+ km) Charge Time: 8-10 hours (110-120 VAC or 220-240 VAC) for full charge Cycle Life: 1500+ full charges LCD Touch Screen: Vehicle operations monitor - miles remaining, power consumption, each cells' level of charge, battery temperature, drive time, distance traveled, and average speed.
I fear I overstated my case.
There are Pelletier devices and heat pipes, but the engineering challenges of heat dissipation at least equal all the other ones.
Yeah, no kidding. Efficiently getting ready to take out the real patriots.
Oh, my vision of the future is just fine, thank you. But I DO know what the "state of the art" in battery technology is. And without a significant breakthrough there, this pipe dream exoskeleton simply isn't practical. It WILL have its niche uses where it can be hooked up to wall power, but as a free-roving system---no chance.
Man you are funny.... Ever price a Porche 911?
.....Bob
GE was working on "powered exoskeleton" suits since the late 1950s. Their work was predated by the "waldos" used to handle radioactive isotopes in "hot cells". Their original concept was to build a suit with hydraulic servo actuators (like auto "power steering") at the joints. It became obvious that it was not necessary to have the man inside the suit if you used electrically operated servo valves to control the actuators. It also became obvious that by taking the man out of the suit it would allow you to scale the resultant avatar either down in size to work in very confined quarters or up to as large as needed to replace forklifts and cranes.
As time went on it also became obvious that that a walking bipedal avatar was not necessarily optimum. From the stability standpoint a wheeled or track mounted remote actuator looked more promising and has led to todays bomb handling "robots" for example. The military has found it easier to retrofit remote controls on existing vehicles rather then design special remote worker suits for hazardous tasks.
In the early 80s I worked on a project to convert a standard front end loader with a back hoe to remote operation. The goal was to build an inexpensive vehicle to remove unexploded shells at a firing range. Since the existing vehicle was already almost completely hydraulically controlled, our job was basically adding servo valves to allow a remote link. Adding TV cameras for vision and it was finished. The Army liked it and we never heard from them again.
Regards,
GtG
PS The major problem faced by designers of this type of equipment (man sized or smaller) is finding a workable power source. Large scale machines can afford to carry their own power supply.
These are not the droids you’re looking for.
The cable trailing behind it probably supplies the power. The big obstacle for fielding one of those would be the battery
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpBG-nSRcrQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2bExqhhWRI&feature=related
The sound you hear in the background is a chainsaw motor.
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