Talk-Polywell.org

http://gizmodo.com/5206539/mass-product ... ewcomments

the suit uses electrodes or something to detect the nerve signals in the muscle just before it contracts.

Does anyone on here have an idea about what kind of electrode/sensor is used, and how it would work?

kunkmiester wrote:http://gizmodo.com/5206539/mass-product ... ewcomments

the suit uses electrodes or something to detect the nerve signals in the muscle just before it contracts.

Does anyone on here have an idea about what kind of electrode/sensor is used, and how it would work?

I do not know what kind of pickup electrodes they are going to use in this particular case. but for the hobbyist "cyber builder" there are several medical pickups that can be bought fairly cheaply that are sufficient to pick up a signal from a tensing muscle.
Both EKG and EEG pads are fine. They do not give any option for tactile feedback however. And it is there that the challenge lies. without a sense of how much force one is exerting, control of the suit becomes a nightmare. imagine trying to walk without ever knowing how hard you push of on each step.
The pro's have cracked the feedback issue ages ago. I'ts generally just been about cost and integrated computing speed for the last 10 years.
Give them another 5 years and walker suits will be commonplace wherever humans can benefit from the extra strength and protection of a powered armored exoskeleton.

http://www.sinc.co.uk/sinc_companies/su ... nsors.html

Well, I found these, so I'd see about using those eventually, and they would probably help with patent issues as well.

something else with these is if you set up a electromyographic meter or whatever, and had it so that it would automatically figure out where everything was, you could just plug in. It also makes it a bit more available to amateurs, since you can buy the sensor pack, get it calibrated in one simple session, and then hack it for a control unit, rather than messing with everything at once. HAL is easy, since you're using a sensor on just one muscle, but getting more bandwidth to get more control for more sophisticate stuff is going to be harder.

The other option is to do what the more successful US suit is doing--a simple master/slave system. That's fine for a "gorilla" suit, but I'm thinking more Night sabers than Starship troopers.

The legs and walking are the only real challenge for feedback. I plan on leaving the hands more or less free--tools and weapons would latch on nearby, leaving a grip to manipulate it with. This lets your body provide the feedback--you'd relax your grip as it tightens, allowing the suit to ease up on it's pressure. Walking is hard because you're not really conscious of the the feedback mechanisms, and so the computer has to do more of it. Like you said though, it's also not too hard to work with, so it's simply a matter of finding the solution.

Generally, they do these sort of movie tricks with mirrors.

Oh, the suit? I think this one uses muscle nerve signals.

If you're using a polywell to power it then size-wise you're talking more about a Jagd Mirage than a standard M.I. suit... a DPF could get you down into the Gundam/ Mortar Headd range, though...

But if you swap treads for legs then a DPF could power a large MBT and of course several DPFs or a polywell could power an early-model Bolo...

... DPFs also gets us hovertanks with directed energy weapons...

...

This topic, as indicated by the title, is more about the human-machine interfacing, rather than the power source.

Ideally though, a DPF might be small enough for something like an E-frame, though bulky perhaps. I'm thinking that's actually the size point to go for, a mobile suit is too big to be reasonable for a variety of purposes, and a reasonable power supply and such won't fit well in anything smaller.

You can get a decent suit out of a battery pack--we've gone over a variety of techs discussed on this forum that are better than lithium ion, and the HAL suit claims three hours or so on a pack that would easily at least tripled in size without trouble. You'll be somewhat limited in performance, but it's feasible.

The other problem is control--you need a way to tell the machine what to do. A master/slave system will move a suit around, and a joystick can do other stuff, but it's less intuitive. Once a suit like HAL is configured, you need little training to make stuff happen. Running a radio or something will take some work, but that would take some work anyway.