We might be seeing an Iron Man in real life soon? Well not quite. Many companies are working on suits that will make the human body stronger and capable of doing what it won’t normally be strong enough to do! DARPA’s exoskelton program said that units enabling soldiers to “run faster, leap further and carry more will be delivered for Army testing in 2008 coincidentally the year the first Iron Man movie was released. That was 6 years ago!
Things have gone far beyond that now, with many exoskeleton systems being tested to enhance humans to do more. Companies like Daewoo, eksobionics and university researchers have been testing and trying out the feasibility of these devices
Conclusion; This doesn’t mean we will all be in iron suits and flying to work soon. One thing I am glad for is that physically challenged people can do more with the help of these artificial skeletal structures and depend less on helpers.
A worker wearing an exoskeleton suit at the Daewoo plant in South Korea Photo: Daewoo
If you thought the movie Transformers was mere science fiction, you might have been correct last year. It has turned out team of researchers from Harvard and MIT have developed a new kind of robot – one that is capable of folding and unfolding itself, much like origami.
“Getting a robot to assemble itself autonomously and actually perform a function has been a milestone we’ve been chasing for many years,” researcher Robert J. Wood said in a press release
Even though they don’t look like much, this is actually a great achievement and first of its kind.
What is the use for this? Well, first thing to come to mind is that they will make great toys. But in a world where space is becoming less and less, we can build machines that can fold up to smaller bits and tuck themselves away when not in use. For me, I still think it is cool to see a real life Transformer. Autobots!
