Iron Man Suits, for Real?

May 16, 2008

I confess that I haven’t yet seen the box-office smash Iron Man, but when I was a kid, I was an avid fan of the Marvel comic book adventures of inventive industrialist Tony Stark and the powered armored suit that he used to battle the Crimson Dynamo, Titanium Man and other nefarious agents of the international communist conspiracy. (For millennials out there who may be puzzled by the last reference, this was back in the days of the Cold War, before the NHL was filled with Russian hockey players and the Chinese began manufacturing iPods and running shoes.) What scrawny pre-adolescent wouldn’t want to be incredibly strong, bulletproof and able to smash through walls without even breaking a sweat? It was a tantalizing fantasy. Judging from the movie’s $100 million opening gross, it still is.
But what about having one of those Iron Man suits for real? What we’re actually talking about is a powered exoskeleton, a mobile machine with a skeleton-like framework and a power source that augments — or even replaces — the biochemical processes of the human body to move its mechanized limbs. Since 2000, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been funding research to develop such devices. As a recent article in Popular Science reports:

DARPA’s ambitious wish list read like something from a comic: a machine that would let the average soldier lug hundreds of pounds and hike for days without fatigue, handle weapons that normally require two people, and whisk the injured off the battlefield by tossing one or two men on his back. They asked for the suit to support more armor, rendering men impervious to enemy fire. They even wanted it to make soldiers jump higher. They wanted Iron Man.

To that end, Sarcos Research Corporation, whose robotics operations were recently acquired by defense giant Raytheon, has created the XOS exoskeleton, whose capabilities you can see in this video:

In Japan, a company called Cyberdyne has developed the Robot Suit HAL-5, which it hopes to put into production later this year. Unlike with the XOS, HAL-5’s user doesn’t have to work controls; sensors pick up signals sent by the user’s brain to his or her muscles, and use them to direct the exoskeleton’ s mechanical limbs. Here’s a YouTube video of HAL-5 in action:

Besides creating a generation of military super-soldiers, powered exoskeletons could have a wide range of useful applications, such as enabling rescue workers to venture safely into burning buildings or toxic disaster sites. A company in Israel has developed an assistive exoskeleton called ReWalk that promises to allow paralyzed people to walk and perform other tasks.

That all sounds wonderful. But as any comics reader knows, powered exoskeletons have the potential to be used for enormous evil as well. A dictator backed by cyborg soldiers, for example, could easily crush any ordinary non-enhanced citizens who dared to oppose him. (Would the Second Amendment apply to Iron Man suits?) And if the technology got into the hands of criminals or terrorists, who knows what awful uses they might find for it? No wonder Tony Stark is such a tormented soul.

So, what do you think about unleashing powered exoskeletons? Express your opinion below.

Comments

[Astroboy]

IMAGINE YOU COULD PLAY DODGEBALL WITH CARS IN ONE OF THOSE SUITS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Caffeine Driven Stress Magnet]

I'm imagining Don Rumsfeld wearing one of these suits.

[Minh]

They shouldn't do that (play dodgeball with cars). What if someone is in that car? You could kill that person.

[DavidJamesPhox]

Well I can say that America should make super soldiers suits because what if some other people come out with the super suit & take over the world, even though America had the power to be the first with the suit & believe me, America would use it in all the right ways.

[Patriot]

I agree! We can't lose the race to develop armored exoskeletons. I see this technology being especially useful in places like Iraq.

[McCain for President]

I don't see any armor on the U.S. version. How come?

[Jason Moritz]

I think these armored suits have a lot of possible negative effects. Soldiers wearing powered armor would be insulated and alienated from ordinary unarmored humans. I think this could turn warfare into a sort of unreal video game or amusement park thrill ride, and lead the slaughtering of anyone who opposes them, whether they are lightly-armed insurgents or ordinary civilians who get in the way. If we put American soldiers into these suits and send them into the Middle East, Africa or Latin America, our country is going to be even more hated around the world.

[Mothra]

Once you get past the "Iron Man" hype, powered exoskeletons have incredible potential to help people with spinal trauma, neurological illnesses or other disabling conditions.

[Obama for President]

How expensive will these armored exoskeletons be, and does the military really need them? It seems to me that when you surround a soldier with more and more gadgets, there's a greater chance that the stuff is going to break down disasterously under the stress of combat situations. The same is true of the concept of networked combat. I know that my simple linksys router goes on the fritz every now and then. What's going to happen when an Army unit's wireless network does that?

[Nathan]

This would save lives, no need for deploying thousands when you have hundreds of these.

[Rambo]

I think this technology has fantastic potential and it is worth any cost for the Pentagon to acquire it.

[Mandarin]

I'm still more powerful than the Iron Man suit, even if they left me out of the movie!

[Chapter]

Closer and closer to Space Marines! Awesome X).... or chaos Space marines... not so awesome =p.

[Jenni]

I honestly, honestly think that they should design them to look like the suits in halo. I'm not even kidding. It looks so similar to the models they already have!