$50 Million Project Intended to Increase Soldiers' Strength, Performance Source: Albuquerque Journal The Pentagon is researching a powered exoskeleton that
would make soldiers stronger, faster, able to carry heavier weapons
and "leap extraordinary heights," according to military documents and
officials.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA,
the Pentagon's research arm, is spending $50 million on "Exoskeletons
for Human Performance Augmentation."
Sandia National Laboratories is working on a segment of
the project, with a small group of scientists in its Intelligent
Systems and Robotics Center developing several technologies, officials
acknowledged.
"The idea would be some kind of exoskeleton that would
allow a soldier to have increased strength, increased endurance,
increased speed," said Jan Walker, a DARPA spokeswoman in Arlington,
Va.
The soldier would wear it as an outer skin, rather than
operate it, and its functions would optimally become an extension of
the soldier's natural movements.
"A guy in combat doesn't need to figure out which button
to push," Walker said.
She emphasized the program is in the earliest of stages,
with scientists and engineers figuring out what advances are needed to
make it work. Tests could be as much as a decade away.
The developers' first task, according to Walker: build a
compact, wearable and quiet power generator that would provide the
juice for all the other devices on the exoskeleton. It would have to
provide power for between four and 24 hours of continuous use.
"We're not sure what kind of fuel to use or how to store
the fuel," Walker said.
With greater strength and endurance, the soldier could
wear more armor and carry heavier weapons and more ammunition, she
said.
DARPA, in documents displayed on its Web site, announced
last year it was seeking devices that do one or more of the following:
-- "Assist pack-loaded locomotion" The suits could also be equipped with computers and
communications gear that would give soldiers real-time intelligence
about their comrades and targets, military documents say.
Such devices have long been the stuff of science
fiction, most notably in Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel "Starship
Troopers." The story is about the infantry of the far future, with
soldiers wearing mobile combat armor to fight alien bugs.
In the 1986 movie "Aliens," Sigourney Weaver fends off
the alien hive queen wearing a machine that looks like a cross between
an exoskeleton and a forklift. And a whole genre of Japanese animation
is devoted to these things.
Walker said the work is going on at various labs around
the country. Sandia officials confirmed this week that theirs is one
of them, but they declined to give many details.
Lab spokesman John German provided a written statement
from project officials. "Sandia is proposing and assessing various
solutions for improving speed, strength, endurance and payload," the
statement said.
German said project officials declined to provide more
information because they have not obtained patents on their work.
German said the lab has received $310,000 from DARPA to
work on the project since 1999.
Last month, the Defense Department awarded Millennium
Jet Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., $1 million under the program "for the
development and testing of a one-man vertical takeoff and landing
flying exoskeleton."
by John J. Lumpkin
-- "Prolong locomotive endurance"
-- "Increase locomotive speed"
-- "Augment human strength"
-- "Leap extraordinary heights and/or distances"