I wish TVP would have pointed out that he effectively build a strandbeest that can be driven by a person inside the strandbeest. still really cool. Normally these are self propelled https://www.strandbeest.com/
It could easily be remote controlled, but you lose the whole mecha appeal. Also, the damage needs to be controlled, otherwise the repairs would be too expensive. Feels more like entertainment wrestling than mecha fights.
I am bit worried about Poland’s push to restrict media. Isn’t that exactly what we’re fighting for in Ukraine? A system where many opinions can co-exist.
> I am bit worried about Poland’s push to restrict media.
That misrepresents the issue, though it was reported that way abroad. A couple points…
The law in question restricts how much foreign investment and ownership there can be in any given media company in Poland. 80% of media in Poland are foreign owned (the majority are in German hands). Imagine if Russia controlled 80% of American media. In Poland’s case, it is also struggling with its own status as a de facto vulnerable neocolonial possession, something Poles would rather not be, especially given their history the last couple of centuries. Indeed, a major cause of the weakening and fall of Poland in the 18th century was foreign meddling and the alliances made by warring political factions with foreign powers who played them off each other.
The media company that became a symbol of opposition to this law is TVN which is owned by the American company Discovery Inc. and notoriously pro-opposition and pro-status quo w.r.t. Poland’s status of subordination (the ruling party has no such corporate/foreign backing). So it’s not surprising that the American corporate media would mispresent the nature of this law to Americans in line with thosee corporate interests. The very notion that corporate and foreign media are free of the interests that own and fund them is rather amusing.
Mind you, the internet isn’t censored, so Poles are free to follow both the many domestic and foreign media outlets critical of the ruling party at their pleasure, and this is good. And with respect to state media, it is the state media and no pretense is made about it being otherwise. Whenever the ruling party changes, so does the management at TVP.
You need a strong rigid cage to protect the operator, with comfortable seating and controls, a large and heavy power source, and something more practical than legs for movement. Put all that together, and you essentially have an excavator.
Excavators can do amazing things in the hands of a skilled operator. They have interchangeable tools and they come in a wide range of sizes. Maybe the small ones feel more like exoskeletons than the big ones. Some even have the operator in a standing position. The smallest Bobcat (technically a "loader" instead of an "excavator") is little more than a cage on wheels with one big arm: https://www.bobcat.com/na/en/equipment/loaders/skid-steer-lo...
I guess what you're really missing to make this feel like a scifi exoskeleton is two arms, more degrees of freedom per arm, a much more capable "hand", way more speed in all of the actuators, and a more 1:1 control style with some kind of touch sensitivity/force feedback. All of that would make these things way more expensive, complex, and most importantly, fragile. Durability and ease of maintenance is a huge consideration for practical work.
Last month I watched a guy in one of these accidentally smash his jackhammer attachment on a low overhang and sever the hydraulic hoses, spraying hydraulic fluid everywhere. I can only imagine that this kind of thing happens all the time. If that was a 20 DOF robot hand with touch sensors instead of a 1 DOF dumb jackhammer attachment, it could easily have been damaged beyond repair.
Lack of any real market for them. In any industrial application, a human driving a forklift is way more efficient than someone given superman strength via an exosuit. There are some niche military applications such as rapidly loading a truck by hand, piling sandbags and such. Replacement or supplementing the function of damaged limbs is another niche, but that isn't much of a market. Everyone wants one but nobody expects to jog to work in one, as opposed to any number of other vehicle options.
I read once about a Japanese exosuit powered by compressed air. The market they were targeting was elder care. Using compressed air meant you could assist/lift elderly people around water without worry.
Exoskeleton is an umbrella term that covers a wide variety of use-cases. For strain-relief and augmented-strength you've got the fairly simple and thin military rigs that work mechanically with a bunch of springs, sometimes a small backpack-like battery.
For paraplegic wheelchair users, for example, you need an exoskeleton that fully replaces the functions of the legs: structure, balance, movement. That's much more complicated and much bigger. And the tech isn't there for consumer use, we're just starting to get there with Atlas.
Beyond that you've got many wheelchair-binding disabilities that present unique challenges and require functionalities that are somewhere in between the two exos described above. A lot of wheelchair users who retain their ability to move their legs simply use braces to enhance their structural integrity and crutches for balance, but couldn't use a powered exoskeleton due to the injuries it might cause from sudden movements or ranges of motion that aren't adapted to their limitations.
In fact there are a number of invisible disabilities that take away a person's ability to hike. I was inspired to start 3D-printing with the goal of developing a lower body exoskeleton using "exotic" filaments that would make the suit less bulky, more rugged, and longer lasting than the admittedly amazing prototypes I've seen made of PLA.
My guess is that current trails that aren't already accessible would struggle to support a machine of that size (secure cabin and then width of legs/etc), and there wouldn't be the demand for immediate upgrade of wilder trails. I've hiked a lot and can't remember the last time I saw a wheelchair on an accessible trail; prams are more common.
National parks have transitioned from trying to attract people to the outdoors to now trying to minimise their impact on the environment, so I assume they'd be reluctant to upgrade non-accessible trails like that. Smaller parks might have smaller budgets.
Then add risks on steep or exposed trails. My father in law is in a wheelchair (MS) and bumps/scraps doorways in our house. Move that to a trail on a slope and it would be very dangerous.
I'm picturing a seat supported by 4 robotic legs and controlled by a handheld joystick. The seat could be self-balancing, self-stabilizing for a smooth ride, and have embedded cameras, LIDAR, etc. to prevent collisions. It basically walks itself, you just nudge the joystick to tell it which direction to walk in and it finds a smart path in that direction.
Probably beyond the reach of current technology, and impractically expensive for the time being. But in the long run, I can imagine that the cost of giving every wheelchair user something like this might be cheaper than the cost of making buildings accessible. Most relevant for newly built cities I guess. Basically run the numbers on the cost of providing exoskeletons vs the cost of making everything ramp-accessible and providing accessible transport. The exoskeleton could sprint over to your house when you summoned it ;-) Possible disadvantage: shortage of exoskeletons during city festivals when everyone wants to go out and there are lots of out-of-town visitors?
I think dexterity would be a problem for construction. Or if you re-engineer the building to accommodate machines, then you probably want more automation than a human in a mech suit. Mining probably is all set with much larger machines, though I know nothing about mining.
Mainly what does having an expensive, fragile human who requires tons of support (air, water, breaks) and legal liability & regulation offer over a remote or now/soon autonomous machine?
I think that's a very good point. I agree that there's not much market for it, but also that humans are completely redundant here. Any huge mech would be easier to operate as a drone than a huge human Tupperware.
In any industry, designing things for specialized tools (cranes, forklifts) is typically much easier than designing a universal tool to handle everything. (exoskeletons). They have some niche uses like prolonged work with the arms raised, though.
In military, passive exoskeletons are more useful than powered ones. They are just fancy springs to rebalance and lighten the load on soldiers.
For medical purposes, exoskeletons are used for thousands of years. They are probably not what you'd call an exoskeleton, though. A basic example is a splint.
Competition will certainly deliver greater speed. I wonder about a couple things.
1) How do you define what is a mech? Would a mech with something that rolls along the ground qualify? It seems like that's the quickest/easiest way to gain speed.
2) How can you protect the fans? A search of "monster truck kills spectators" finds a lot of incidents. I didn;t count.
I suppose appropriate rules could solve either of these, hopefully w/out bloodshed.
Nothing wrong with that they built. Seems like it'd be a cool thing to bring to Burning Man. It just wouldn't quite qualify as what I'd consider a "sport"... it's not much fun to watch this thing lumbering around like a dying crustacean.
There is a YouTube video from megaprojects about how mechs are actually pretty bad war machines. I suspect it's similar for sports.
A wheeled, tracked, or flying vehicle of similar size, weight and cost is always superior. It's just a fundamentally inefficient way to go about building and locomoting a machine.
Battle tech community that absolutely loves walking mechs also usually understands that tanks are just better in most situations.
There is even some scary tank mods for mechwarrior to make them more realistic in how over powered they are.
Sure it can. For example, if we look at the sport for which we are arguably most evolved for - endurance running - then the simple addition of a bicycle improves the efficiency way, way beyond anything we or any animal can achieve.
Now, if they combined the two... had this thing chasing itty-bitty cars around a closed track, eating whatever it catches... THAT, I'd pay money to watch.
Jonathan Tippett has been working on this for well over a decade at this point. They had a prototype leg when I met him in like 2011 and he was talking about this becoming a sport even then.
"Racing" is the wrong way to go with this. This thing is not fast compared to actual race cars. It would fit far better in a trashy new monster truck smash setting.
Avatar 1 shows military use of exoskeletons. At least they're upper-body exoskeletons to my recollection, I think the lower-body parts are humanoid legs but with vehicular type controls (ie you don't have to move your legs to move the "exosuits" legs.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Must_Fall:_2097
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Jox