Exoskeletons: How's it coming?

mean you can't get a virus. Um. No, it should, it should. I am like a fortress here, man. I exercise a lot. I like I spray lice all in my face three times a day. That's probably what did it. It's it's it's lurksome. I know. I feel bad for you anyway, that's me. Chuck's fine. This is Charles W. Chuck Bryant that you did across from me. He's totally fine. That is a biddle. And something I noticed about Chuck today was a little stirring. Chuck is the spinning image

for Tony Stark. Please do you look exactly like Tony Stark? Like Robert Downey Jr. No, you do. You've got the hair like eight Robert Downey you have. You've got the hair, you have the facial hair, You've got them, the glowing chest, you have the whole thing going on. All right For the uninitiated, UM, Tony Stark is iron Man. He's a billionaire industrialist, iron man, philanthropist. Yeah, and that was clearly just said to introduce our topic. That is not true.

I patted you on the shoulder and reminded you that you looked like Tony Stark before we were ever recording. Alright, but we are talking about exoskeletons, which is the Iron Man suit for all practical purposes, is an exo skeleton? Yeah, because one thing I learned reading this article is that an exo skeleton is also known as a wearable robot, which falls under the category of human augmentation. Yeah. And and one of the Japanese versions of that, the how

one that we're going to talk about. I saw some video today that they had one that was in the color of the Iron Man suit. Is that right? Yeah, of course they're going to do that at some point, sure, but I well, did you see the one on the on the page zero of this article. It's awesome. It's pretty cool. It's like an army exo skeleton and next to it's as future soldier and there's a little there's nice track lighting above it. For some reason, play more

with claymore. Jeez, that was grim. Um well okay, sorry but still grim. Okay. Um, yeah, I saw some exo skeleton videos too that we're pretty awesome. It's pretty amazing where we're at right now. Yeah, because this is this is not new, but it turns out the U. S Military, the Pentagon has been like, give us an exo skeleton, we want one bad. It's like the six these and pretty much NonStop. People have been trying to do this and we're finally getting to the point now where they're

becoming viable. So it's awesome. It is awesome. So, um, let's talk about the history of this. Like we're saying, an exoskeleton is a wearable robot um it's also human augmentation. But you can't confuse it for armor because armor is not really augmenting anything. It's protecting. Although an exoskeleton would um customarily be provide some sort of protection like armor, there's a distinction between the two. Yeah, although these that

they're making now don't have any armament that I can see. No, it's coming though, yeah sure, yeah these other than protecting its own systems, right yeah, but yeah, I guess if your arm happens to be behind that, it's protecting it as well. It's a win win. So, like I was saying, let's um, this has been around for a little while, this idea or the Pentagon's quest for this, but um Kevin Bondser and Patrick Kiger point out that this idea goes back to like the nineteenth century. Um, have you

heard of the steam man on the prairies of the Prairie? Yeah? Yeah, have you seen that? Yeah, it looked it up. It looks like a robot WC. Fields, it does. It looks like that might have been the or actually that was PREWC. Fields. But um, yeah, it's a big It was a book. It was a little Dime Dime Store novel in eighteen

sixty eight by Edward Sylvester Ellis. And uh, it was a big, giant W. C. Fields robot that pulled Um, I guess the creator of said robot in a little cart, Johnny Brainerd like a rickshaw of sorts pulled by a robot of sorts. Yeah, so really you could like it into a robot more than a wearable robot. He was basically a robot that pulled a cart. But for eighteen sixty eight for someone to be dreaming this stuff up

pretty remarkable. I say that the nineteenth century was a had a deep pool of fantastic stick imagination agreed from like the mid nineteenth century to like the thirties, that's where it all happened. I mean that's where it all began at least, and then the seventies happened, and like that was cool, Like we went back to it a little bit. But the nineteenth century to the thirties, it was right there. Man. If they could have thought up something like the Internet, they would have. And also, um,

you can look up um the steam Man of the Prairies. Uh, there's images of them all over the Internet. And if you're interested in that kind of thing, the entire books on Project Guttenberg. Cool. Yeah, not to check that out. So I'm doing great work Steve Gutenberg these days. Yeah, he's killing a project. I mean, who would have thought that, Like post Police Academy, he would dedicate himself to something like that noble um, I think some people might think

for serious. Uh So after that, let's flash forward a bit to one. This is actually a couple of years before Iron Man. It's kind of remarkable. Even in sixty three the Iron Man as a comic made its appearance. Well, I wonder if like this was and this inspired Iron Man. It probably did. Probably so those Marvel guys, they had their finger on the pulse of stuff. The Pentagon had a couple of proposals for the wear wearable robots and uh.

The AP even reported on the quote Servo soldier, the tom servos soldier, and uh, it was a human tank equipped with power steering and power breaks, run faster, and lift heavy objects, immune to germ warfare, poison gas, and even a nuclear blast. Because that's the whole point. They're thinking big. It's basically like, we need to come up with some sort of outfit that a person can wear that will help them be bigger, faster, stronger, jump higher,

punch harder. Yeah, what's astounding, chuck um is. Within just a couple of years, Cornell scientists named Neil Meisen had something that he called the Man amplifier that looks remarkably similar to the stuff of today. Have you seen it? Yeah, it's sort of reminded me of the um you saw Aliens, right, Yeah, remember the little forklift thing. It sort of looked like that on top, but the base of it instead of legs, had like a tank caterpillar tracks like a tank. I

didn't see that part. Yeah, the ones I saw look just like that exoskeleton from Aliens. That might have been the Superman suit. I think it was the same thing now that well, the Man amplifier that I saw from Popular Science, it was like a machine tank track. That's pretty cool. But even so, it had the big, big grabby robot arms. Yeah, crush killed Distroy whistles. Yeah. Um. So this guy Neil Misen had ad this the idea, the concept down pretty quickly and pretty short order. Right. Um,

he wasn't the only one. This kind of set off. This Pentagon call for exoskeletons set off like a fervor. Um g E came up with something called the the pedipulatory pedipulator. You see that one. It looked like a modular like you could hook something together. Yeah, it looked like a sort of like the cab that you ride in look like a big one of the big bulldozer cabs, right, and then it had but it had four legs and

actually walked. Did it have four legs? I saw so the when I saw again, it looked like a um An ad at right from the Empire st two legs. Yeah, interesting, um, but they were strung together. There was like four of them, four legs. No, I had to no, I had died four. You're thinking of the Tanton. No, the Tanton is the like the beast. No, the ad At was the big four leggedge okay, not thinking of the smaller version that's

on two legs in the same scene. Just to act right, I'm sure there's Star Wars pans out there going it's called and we're going to hear from. Yeah. I don't remember what that's called. Um, but you could. You could combine these things in four and basically like a UM human excess skeleton centipede. Yeah. But none of these to me look like exoskeletons. They look like machines that you

sit in and ride. And I got okay. Then I saw something that said this is Neil Mines and wearing his man amplifier and it looks exactly like the stuff that they test out today. Yeah, well, good for him, Good for Neil. I get the impression that he was ahead of his time. So most of these things, unfortunately, of course he was out of his time. Uh ended

it like in somewhat of a dead end. Um. Why there's some really good reasons why well, yeah, I mean the reasons you would probably guess, which is its way too com expensive. Computers aren't fast enough, especially in everything is too heavy. The batteries. We can't design batteries that

will last long enough. It's like sort of the quest with all technology is like you gotta make it affordable and uh light enough to operate and you know call yeah, I guess suffordable, we cost effective, but all these things and then technology is just a limits of technology. So material science basically wasn't where it needed to be and

is only just now starting to get there. One of the other big problems, one of the other big hurdles with making a decent exoskeleton is the actuator, which are them the little muscles that move, the electro mechanical muscles that move in place of the human muscles. Um. But we're starting to get there. I mean, computing power is getting smaller and more um more um portable and incredibly powerful. That was the word I was looking for. And wait

until we get into quantum computing. Man, it's going to take off like a rocket. I'm sure, um we are. Battery life is getting more portable, smaller, more durable, um. And apparently actuator science is really starting to come around. So that means that we have all the stuff in place. And apparently DARPA, the UM Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency a k A the Secret Area people. I think Morgan Freeman heads up that division, is that right? Okay? So? Um?

What's his name? Somebody? Fox? The Fox? Didn't I don't even remember in the Batman movies. Yeah, I can't remember. Okay, he's read to me always um, but not Red Fox. Um.

So uh. The DARPA was apparently well aware that this the material science and computing power was starting to come around, and they put out another call for exoskeletons, and this one is starting to pay off, well, a call in the form of seventy five million dollars worth of funding, meaning hey, we can actually put a little dough towards this and they said they started a division called the Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation, which doesn't spell anything cool. No,

they kind of dropped the ball there, um. And they wanted something that would accomplish five things. They had a directive. They wanted something that would, uh allow just a regular soldier to carry like hundreds of pounds of gear without much exertion. And this is one of the big applications. It's not to fly around and shoot people like Iron Man like a lot of it's kind of boring. It's like lifting supplies all day long, doing the work of

three soldiers, basically loading missiles. Yeah, really heavy stuff that you might need a machine to do. You can now get a man machine. Uh. The second thing they wanted um to be able to handle heavy weapons that would require two people. Now you can do it with one. They wanted to be able to carry soldiers off the field,

which is a huge deal. Uh. And one of the reasons my brother in law, who's a marine, says that they don't allow women in combat it is because a lot of you know, you need someone who can throw a soldier over their back and trudge through the desert for a day. If you need to. That's a common obstacle that's thrown up against female firefighters as well. Oh yeah, I get that. I'm all for equality, but you gotta take care of the people. You know what I'm saying.

You're a dangerous water show, no man, I mean, I'm all for it. If there's a woman who can throw me on her back and carry me three miles through the desert, I'm all for it. But just don't leave me dying out there. Um. They wanted it to be uh, impenetrable and impenetrable to gunfire, which is pretty key too. There's the armor thing, the armor thing, and then finally I think this was the little kid and all of them.

They wanted it to be able to jump really high, really really high, just like and and make it jump really high and say cool stuff. And there's actually, um, there's something called the springtail exoskeleton flying vehicle. Have you seen that one? Yeah? That I don't know about hovering motionlessly thousands of feet in the air. I don't think they're at that point yet. Yeah, and this didn't even this was not even exo skeleton it No, it was more like it was like a g I Joe. Um, machine.

And it's not a jet pack either, which was in this article. No, what it is is, um, it's a couple of turbines, kind of like two fans. Yeah, um off to the side in a m with a ladder in between. But so you're standing under like under a ladder, which is just bad luck to begin with. And then connected to the ladder are two turbines on each side and you just hang on and you take off, which again I don't think it's a combat exoskeleton, but it would be very cool if your exoskeleton can fit inside.

So you run five hundred miles carrying five hundred pounds for straight hours, and then you get in this thing and fly off. I think that's that's where we're trying to head here. It's like a little personal helicopter at this point though, Yeah, because I mean, if the company can crack the this code, they can make all manner of cool little things right and make them all compatible, like and then tell the army like, collect all eight but you have to buy the happy meal, and the

happy meal cost you. We should talk about Arcos, which would later morph into Raytheon. They're one of the leaders in the exoskeleton racket. Um guy named Steve Jacobsen is the uh was the robot maker at Sarkos. I don't know,

is he still let raytheon? You know, I don't know. Okay, Well he's what started it there though, and um he basically, uh devised a system where sensors would detect these little minute contractions in your own muscles, like if you go to like grab something, your muscle is going to contract a little bit. And uh, then there were a series of valves which regulate the flow of this high pressure

juice to these joints. Those joints powered cylinders attached to cables that were sort of like tendons, and he sort of made a very basic mechanical version of how our own muscles and tendons operate well, like an extension of an augmentation of it, where basically these sensors go, oh, I know what you're but you let me and um, you you you will pull your arm off if you try to pick this up, But me, the exo skeleton

knows what you're trying to do. And then after I'm sure, training for a few days in this thing, it just becomes second nature. Yeah, did you see the Iron Man guy, the dude from the movie No, I tested that video. I was looking for it. The guy was Clark Gregg. He was like the agent from the Avengers and the Ironman movies. And uh, he tried this thing on and like punched wood blocks and lifted these big weights and did push ups and it was pretty remarkable. That's pretty cool. Yeah,

it's amazing. Yes, And they called this the XOS this is the first prototype, and the x OS well that's actually the x OS two nail Well that was Yeah, the x OS was the first prototype. But this is kind of like the UM the Leading Edge, Like I think the Pentagon and Darker are putting a lot of funding behind Raytheon's UM x OS. Yeah, they predict by they could have a tethered module, going, what does that mean? That means it's tethered. Do I know what the other means?

That means it's attached to something like a cable, right, Oh, so like it's attached to a power source or something like that, something like that. UM, and then they're hoping for a non tethered version and because I mean it's like, hey, bad guys, come over here. Yeah exactly, I can't get you. Well, the t other one would be fine for dudes like loading trucks and things like that on day, but not in what they call the theater of war, you know,

by the way, Winston Churchill, Yeah, I think so. Um, I think we forgot to mention that flying vehicle thing. That thing actually goes over a hundred miles an hour. Now, yeah, and the XOS runs at least ten miles an hour. And I remember reading that first and being like whatever, and then I think, oh, yeah, I can't run ten miles an hour at all. So this thing running ten miles an hour. And the point here is it's in dire. It's because as long as its battery is charged, how

can we run. I mean you could run back get up there, but for like ten seconds and then your heart pops. I'm talking to myself. There's I mean ten miles an hour is Did you walk four miles an hour if you walked pretty fast? No? Not typically, No, that's getting into speedwalking. We do not walk four miles an hour like we walked maybe to two point five. Well, whenever I did hiking, we always based it on a four mile an hour pace. That's really fast. I guess

I was a champion hiker thing. I guess you were. I should have cut that up. You're like, I used to do it on my hands. So, uh, like we said, Sarkos turned into Raytheon, and then there's other competing firms bought by Raytheon. What did I say, it turned into it? I mean there's a distinction. Then Berkeley Bionics is another company. Yeah there, um Civilian Peacetime. They're basically helping out the people who can't walk under their own power any longer.

What they're getting really good at is uh, energy consumption solving, solving that problem and uh they had something called the Human Load Carrier which ran for about twenty hours without a recharge, which is a big deal. Yeah, it's a big leap forward. Did you see there's another one um Argo Medical Technologies has something called the rewalk there and it's like a hundred and fifty green which sounds like a lot, but at the same time, Um, if you're paralyzed,

this thing lets you walk. Yeah, it's it's basically just mechanical legs attached to your regular legs with a little backpack on for the power. Yeah, and it's based on the segue. As far as like you lean forward and it walks forward. You lean back and it stops, which is good because as long as you are as long as you're not paralyzed, as long as you're you have mobility from the waist up, I would think you'd be able to use it because you leave above your waste

that you're sparling. Yeah, and a lot. Actually we should point out a lot of these exoskeletons that even the army and the military are working on are Some of them are just waist down. Some of them are made for you know, punching and lifting and potentially flying and shooting. But they have a lot of waist down work too, which they said helps you like lift things anyway, because you're supposed to live with your legs, right, It just transfers the load to the ground. Um and yeah, we're

also these don't look like um pants. They're not like just exoskeleton pants. Remember fleas um pants made of Teddy Bears. You don't remember this, you should look it up. It's pretty awesome. The bass player yeah from Red Hot Chili. Um. They're they're just kind of like braces with maybe a foot yeah, that you just step into like you can step into these things. Yeah, it looks like sort of like a high tech leg bright So that's a good way to put it. Yeah, except it walks for you.

But pretty soon it's gonna look like an awesome suit of r that you can like run and jump and just hover and just do all sorts of cool stuff. Like really, reading this, I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this stuff is really good. Yeah, and then you see the videos and you think, wow, I bet it's clunky. And then you see the video of a guy that's never walked get up out of a chair and walk, and you think, man, I bet he didn't think it's clunky exactly because he's not trying to

kill anybody. He's just trying to walk exactly. Now, we just need to get the price down for the average person who can't walk. Yeah, um, well, how much were those a hundred and fifteen grand? A hundred and fifty for the walk device? It's still not too bad, no, that's what I'm saying, especially if your instruental chip in uh So, there's a company in Japan called Cyberdyne, and that sounds like a name that James Cameron would make up. But it's real. And they have made a real breakthrough

in a couple of ways. One that they don't their howl machine h a l um. I wonder if Kubrick was live. I'm sure he's tired of people naming everything. How it's like enough already. Did you know someone impersonated him? Oh yeah, they made a movie about it. Yeah, did you see the movie. It wouldn't be great, but John Malkovic always great except in that movie. Um. So they made advances in a couple of ways. One is that

they don't um require the muscle contractions anymore. They pick up on your brain sensors, your electrical messages being sent from your brain. That's an enormous, huge breakthrough. Yeah, because think about it, you don't have to have any mobility whatsoever. Like you could be Stephen Hawking and like run around and like pick up stuff and people and throw them. If you can think it, you can do it. That

should be their motto. And the other breakthrough is is I'm sure you saw the how it's like really streamlined at this point. The Japanese for like robotic design. Yeah, I mean it's pretty sleek. Yeah, they know what they're doing very much um, and now we can flash forward

all the way to two thousand ten. You know, it would be really cool if they've made an exoskeleton, but they made it like look like an Andrew roid, so you put on like this kind of rubbery face too, and like it it had facial expressions and things like that. I think that would be better than this, like really cool suit to go into battle. Just terrorize anybody who saw like this like weird plastic ee human like thing coming at you with like fifty caliber machine gun holding

it like it's nothing. My guess is the way the war is going down today. People are already pretty frightened by these soldiers coming in I guess in the dark and have laser sightings. Yeah, I think you're probably frightened anyway. Even old timey war is probably very frightening. Maybe we should not make it more frightening, now that I think about it. Okay, maybe we should make them look like little lambs that explode on contact. Alright, so we're in

two thousand ten. Um, DARPA has made some serious headway. Now. Their suit weighs about fifty five pounds, which is like, I think this is the XOS is its two yeah, and uh, I can carry two hun pounds and with no fatigue going on, like you said, ten miles an hour, can run and that's pretty impressive. I think it's an it's good enough, especially if the thing can run. Yeah, because this thing is running for you. You're moving, but you're just barely moving and you're not going to get

fatigued at running ten miles an hour. And I can imagine, like you can cover some ground in ten miles an hour. I think about this. You can cover ten miles in one single hour. That's straight. That's true. That's a lot, that's very true. Uh. Eventually they're gonna hook GPS systems up to this. Um it says one of the uses for soldiers would be to obtain info about approaching terrain. So I guess they could send him out ahead or whatever. My friend, have you seen Predator? Yeah, the first one.

I don't think that that's not going to be inserted into this. This whole technology. The thermal thermal Yeah, thermal imaging. So you're just running along ten miles an hour and you have been for twenty straight hours, and you're running through say the desert, and you see everything thermally you're fine. You're gonna be just fine. Yeah, that's a good point,

especially if you can jump really high, uh, really really high. Uh. And then they're also working on some uh some computerized fabric that they would wear that would like monitor all your systems. So I guess the point there is it would be light, Like I'm sure they can monitor your systems now, but it probably too bulky, So you want they're going, You're going to wear the computer as you wear the robot. Pretty amazing. Yeah, And what I mean, we're talking like we're not very far off from this

ten fifteen years maybe, Yeah. And it's not all soldiers, like we said, they're using it a lot of the researches for people with spinal injuries and stuff like that. So pacifists can get on board too, exactly rich pacifists. Um. Also, I want to say, like I came across a really cool website called cybernetic zoo dot com. And if you're into like old timey popular sign and drawings of stuff like this school stuff this covered up in it, so

I would recommend checking that out. You've got anything else on next to skeletons, I want one. That's what I got just give it a few years. Man, I'm gonna get you one that looks like W. C. Fields, okay, and the Man on the Prairie. It looked like a cross between W. C. Fields if w C. Fields mated with the Jetsins Robot made. This is what this thing would look like. Roxy Rosie, Rosie, I think so, I

think Rosie. Uh. Okay. If you want to learn more about Exo skeletons, you can type it into the search bar at how stuffworks dot com and it'll bring up this awesome marketcle to check it out, I said, search bar, this your mail time is mat Uh. This one's kind of a downer, but I feel like we should read it because it's, you know, you need to get the stuff out there. I'm gonna call it abusive grandparents. Oh man,

I saw this. Yeah. We we sort of made some jokes in our time travel cast about the grandfather paradox, and like, are the abusive grandparents because they're also sweet? And there are, of course there are. It's very sad. I think we knew that. Yeah. Hey, guys, today I was listening to the podcast and you brought up abuse of grandparents. You both sounded like it was a tough concept to swallow, and I agree it is that being said, I'm writing you to say that, yes, sadly, there are

abuse of grandparents. I was raised from the age of five by my maternal grandmother, who was physically, mentally and emotionally abusive most of my life. She was abusive to every child who ever came to her house, her children, me, her nieces and nephews. She herself was heavily abused as a child by her mother and father that went on

to be married twice to abuse of husbands. Unfortunately, she wasn't strong enough to break the cycle, and in fact, she encouraged my own mother, her daughter, to hit me. She kicked me out often, and at the age of twelve, I was sent to live with my dead beat father and his wife for a summer. At fourteen, she kicked me out to go live with my mother and her husband. I lived there for a few years, then back to my grandmother because her home was close from my school.

Two weeks before my eighteenth birthday, she instructed my mother to beat me because I stayed home from school to go to the doctor for tonsilitis. I ran away that day and never went back. I moved in with my now husband and his parents, where I lived through the rest of my high school, senior year in college. It has been ten plus years and I have no contact with that grandmother. I've been in therapy for about four of those years. And uh so I just wanted to say, yes,

there are abus of grandparents. Um. And in fact, knew of another girl at my age who was also being raised by interviews of grandmother, and that is Amanda in North Carolina. And I wrote her and she said that she has a nine month old girl and she is going to be the first one in the family to break this cycle of abuse. Yeah. So sat all the way around the grandmother that was abused and then had abuse of husbands and then took that out on her

grandkids and nephews and daughters. And it's just the cycle of abuses horrific and it's up to you to break it. Well, thank you very much, Amanda in North Carolina. We appreciate the candor. That's awesome. I agreed, and congratulations to break into cycle. Um, well, let's see if you have a story that you want to share with us. When we were flipped with something we shouldn't have been we'd like to hear about it. Um. You can tweet to us

at s y s K podcast. You can send us a Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know message post on our wall there that was a clumsy way to quit it. You can also send us a regular old email at stuff podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com, m