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Exoskeletons: How's it coming? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, that continuously, endlessly ill Josh Clark reminiscent of
0:19
Speaker 1: two thousand Tennish nine. What's craziest, dude? I take such
0:24
Speaker 1: good care of myself though I drink so much juice,
0:27
Speaker 1: like fresh juice. You mean I juice almost every day. Well,
0:30
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean you're in penetrable to sickness and viruses.
0:33
Speaker 1: I know I don't smoke cigarettes at all. That doesn't
0:36
Speaker 1: mean you can't get a virus. Um. No, it should,
0:39
Speaker 1: it should. I am like a fortress here, man. I
0:42
Speaker 1: exercise a lot. I like I spray lice all in
0:47
Speaker 1: my face three times a day. That's probably what did it.
0:50
Speaker 1: It's it's it's lurksome. I know. I feel bad for
0:53
Speaker 1: you anyway, that's me. Chuck's fine. This is Charles W.
0:57
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant that you did across from me. He's totally fine.
1:00
Speaker 1: That is a biddle. And something I noticed about Chuck
1:02
Speaker 1: today was a little stirring. Chuck is the spinning image
1:07
Speaker 1: for Tony Stark. Please do you look exactly like Tony Stark?
1:12
Speaker 1: Like Robert Downey Jr. No, you do. You've got the
1:16
Speaker 1: hair like eight Robert Downey you have. You've got the hair,
1:20
Speaker 1: you have the facial hair, You've got them, the glowing chest,
1:26
Speaker 1: you have the whole thing going on. All right For
1:28
Speaker 1: the uninitiated, UM, Tony Stark is iron Man. He's a
1:32
Speaker 1: billionaire industrialist, iron man, philanthropist. Yeah, and that was clearly
1:41
Speaker 1: just said to introduce our topic. That is not true.
1:44
Speaker 1: I patted you on the shoulder and reminded you that
1:46
Speaker 1: you looked like Tony Stark before we were ever recording. Alright,
1:50
Speaker 1: but we are talking about exoskeletons, which is the Iron
1:53
Speaker 1: Man suit for all practical purposes, is an exo skeleton? Yeah,
1:56
Speaker 1: because one thing I learned reading this article is that
2:00
Speaker 1: an exo skeleton is also known as a wearable robot,
2:05
Speaker 1: which falls under the category of human augmentation. Yeah. And
2:09
Speaker 1: and one of the Japanese versions of that, the how
2:11
Speaker 1: one that we're going to talk about. I saw some
2:13
Speaker 1: video today that they had one that was in the
2:15
Speaker 1: color of the Iron Man suit. Is that right? Yeah,
2:18
Speaker 1: of course they're going to do that at some point, sure,
2:21
Speaker 1: but I well, did you see the one on the
2:23
Speaker 1: on the page zero of this article. It's awesome. It's
2:26
Speaker 1: pretty cool. It's like an army exo skeleton and next
2:29
Speaker 1: to it's as future soldier and there's a little there's
2:32
Speaker 1: nice track lighting above it. For some reason, play more
2:34
Speaker 1: with claymore. Jeez, that was grim. Um well okay, sorry
2:43
Speaker 1: but still grim. Okay. Um, yeah, I saw some exo
2:47
Speaker 1: skeleton videos too that we're pretty awesome. It's pretty amazing
2:50
Speaker 1: where we're at right now. Yeah, because this is this
2:52
Speaker 1: is not new, but it turns out the U. S Military,
2:55
Speaker 1: the Pentagon has been like, give us an exo skeleton,
2:58
Speaker 1: we want one bad. It's like the six these and
3:00
Speaker 1: pretty much NonStop. People have been trying to do this
3:03
Speaker 1: and we're finally getting to the point now where they're
3:06
Speaker 1: becoming viable. So it's awesome. It is awesome. So, um,
3:09
Speaker 1: let's talk about the history of this. Like we're saying,
3:14
Speaker 1: an exoskeleton is a wearable robot um it's also human augmentation.
3:19
Speaker 1: But you can't confuse it for armor because armor is
3:22
Speaker 1: not really augmenting anything. It's protecting. Although an exoskeleton would
3:28
Speaker 1: um customarily be provide some sort of protection like armor,
3:32
Speaker 1: there's a distinction between the two. Yeah, although these that
3:35
Speaker 1: they're making now don't have any armament that I can see. No,
3:39
Speaker 1: it's coming though, yeah sure, yeah these other than protecting
3:42
Speaker 1: its own systems, right yeah, but yeah, I guess if
3:45
Speaker 1: your arm happens to be behind that, it's protecting it
3:49
Speaker 1: as well. It's a win win. So, like I was saying,
3:52
Speaker 1: let's um, this has been around for a little while,
3:54
Speaker 1: this idea or the Pentagon's quest for this, but um
4:00
Speaker 1: Kevin Bondser and Patrick Kiger point out that this idea
4:03
Speaker 1: goes back to like the nineteenth century. Um, have you
4:07
Speaker 1: heard of the steam man on the prairies of the Prairie? Yeah? Yeah,
4:11
Speaker 1: have you seen that? Yeah, it looked it up. It
4:13
Speaker 1: looks like a robot WC. Fields, it does. It looks
4:16
Speaker 1: like that might have been the or actually that was PREWC. Fields.
4:20
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, it's a big It was a book.
4:23
Speaker 1: It was a little Dime Dime Store novel in eighteen
4:25
Speaker 1: sixty eight by Edward Sylvester Ellis. And uh, it was
4:29
Speaker 1: a big, giant W. C. Fields robot that pulled Um,
4:34
Speaker 1: I guess the creator of said robot in a little cart,
4:38
Speaker 1: Johnny Brainerd like a rickshaw of sorts pulled by a
4:41
Speaker 1: robot of sorts. Yeah, so really you could like it
4:44
Speaker 1: into a robot more than a wearable robot. He was
4:47
Speaker 1: basically a robot that pulled a cart. But for eighteen
4:50
Speaker 1: sixty eight for someone to be dreaming this stuff up
4:52
Speaker 1: pretty remarkable. I say that the nineteenth century was a
4:57
Speaker 1: had a deep pool of fantastic stick imagination agreed from
5:01
Speaker 1: like the mid nineteenth century to like the thirties, that's
5:04
Speaker 1: where it all happened. I mean that's where it all
5:06
Speaker 1: began at least, and then the seventies happened, and like
5:09
Speaker 1: that was cool, Like we went back to it a
5:11
Speaker 1: little bit. But the nineteenth century to the thirties, it
5:14
Speaker 1: was right there. Man. If they could have thought up
5:16
Speaker 1: something like the Internet, they would have. And also, um,
5:18
Speaker 1: you can look up um the steam Man of the Prairies. Uh,
5:23
Speaker 1: there's images of them all over the Internet. And if
5:26
Speaker 1: you're interested in that kind of thing, the entire books
5:28
Speaker 1: on Project Guttenberg. Cool. Yeah, not to check that out.
5:31
Speaker 1: So I'm doing great work Steve Gutenberg these days. Yeah,
5:34
Speaker 1: he's killing a project. I mean, who would have thought that,
5:37
Speaker 1: Like post Police Academy, he would dedicate himself to something
5:41
Speaker 1: like that noble um, I think some people might think
5:45
Speaker 1: for serious. Uh So after that, let's flash forward a
5:50
Speaker 1: bit to one. This is actually a couple of years
5:53
Speaker 1: before Iron Man. It's kind of remarkable. Even in sixty
5:56
Speaker 1: three the Iron Man as a comic made its appearance. Well,
5:59
Speaker 1: I wonder if like this was and this inspired Iron Man.
6:02
Speaker 1: It probably did. Probably so those Marvel guys, they had
6:04
Speaker 1: their finger on the pulse of stuff. The Pentagon had
6:07
Speaker 1: a couple of proposals for the wear wearable robots and uh.
6:12
Speaker 1: The AP even reported on the quote Servo soldier, the
6:16
Speaker 1: tom servos soldier, and uh, it was a human tank
6:19
Speaker 1: equipped with power steering and power breaks, run faster, and
6:23
Speaker 1: lift heavy objects, immune to germ warfare, poison gas, and
6:27
Speaker 1: even a nuclear blast. Because that's the whole point. They're
6:30
Speaker 1: thinking big. It's basically like, we need to come up
6:33
Speaker 1: with some sort of outfit that a person can wear
6:36
Speaker 1: that will help them be bigger, faster, stronger, jump higher,
6:41
Speaker 1: punch harder. Yeah, what's astounding, chuck um is. Within just
6:46
Speaker 1: a couple of years, Cornell scientists named Neil Meisen had
6:50
Speaker 1: something that he called the Man amplifier that looks remarkably
6:53
Speaker 1: similar to the stuff of today. Have you seen it? Yeah,
6:57
Speaker 1: it's sort of reminded me of the um you saw Aliens, right, Yeah,
7:00
Speaker 1: remember the little forklift thing. It sort of looked like
7:03
Speaker 1: that on top, but the base of it instead of legs,
7:06
Speaker 1: had like a tank caterpillar tracks like a tank. I
7:09
Speaker 1: didn't see that part. Yeah, the ones I saw look
7:11
Speaker 1: just like that exoskeleton from Aliens. That might have been
7:15
Speaker 1: the Superman suit. I think it was the same thing
7:19
Speaker 1: now that well, the Man amplifier that I saw from
7:21
Speaker 1: Popular Science, it was like a machine tank track. That's
7:25
Speaker 1: pretty cool. But even so, it had the big, big
7:29
Speaker 1: grabby robot arms. Yeah, crush killed Distroy whistles. Yeah. Um.
7:35
Speaker 1: So this guy Neil Misen had ad this the idea,
7:39
Speaker 1: the concept down pretty quickly and pretty short order. Right. Um,
7:43
Speaker 1: he wasn't the only one. This kind of set off.
7:45
Speaker 1: This Pentagon call for exoskeletons set off like a fervor.
7:51
Speaker 1: Um g E came up with something called the the
7:57
Speaker 1: pedipulatory pedipulator. You see that one. It looked like a
8:02
Speaker 1: modular like you could hook something together. Yeah, it looked
8:05
Speaker 1: like a sort of like the cab that you ride
8:07
Speaker 1: in look like a big one of the big bulldozer cabs, right,
8:11
Speaker 1: and then it had but it had four legs and
8:14
Speaker 1: actually walked. Did it have four legs? I saw so
8:17
Speaker 1: the when I saw again, it looked like a um
8:20
Speaker 1: An ad at right from the Empire st two legs. Yeah, interesting, um,
8:25
Speaker 1: but they were strung together. There was like four of them,
8:29
Speaker 1: four legs. No, I had to no, I had died four.
8:33
Speaker 1: You're thinking of the Tanton. No, the Tanton is the
8:36
Speaker 1: like the beast. No, the ad At was the big
8:39
Speaker 1: four leggedge okay, not thinking of the smaller version that's
8:42
Speaker 1: on two legs in the same scene. Just to act right,
8:47
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's Star Wars pans out there going it's
8:49
Speaker 1: called and we're going to hear from. Yeah. I don't
8:52
Speaker 1: remember what that's called. Um, but you could. You could
8:55
Speaker 1: combine these things in four and basically like a UM
8:58
Speaker 1: human excess skeleton centipede. Yeah. But none of these to
9:03
Speaker 1: me look like exoskeletons. They look like machines that you
9:06
Speaker 1: sit in and ride. And I got okay. Then I
9:08
Speaker 1: saw something that said this is Neil Mines and wearing
9:11
Speaker 1: his man amplifier and it looks exactly like the stuff
9:14
Speaker 1: that they test out today. Yeah, well, good for him,
9:18
Speaker 1: Good for Neil. I get the impression that he was
9:20
Speaker 1: ahead of his time. So most of these things, unfortunately,
9:24
Speaker 1: of course he was out of his time. Uh ended
9:26
Speaker 1: it like in somewhat of a dead end. Um. Why
9:30
Speaker 1: there's some really good reasons why well, yeah, I mean
9:33
Speaker 1: the reasons you would probably guess, which is its way
9:35
Speaker 1: too com expensive. Computers aren't fast enough, especially in everything
9:41
Speaker 1: is too heavy. The batteries. We can't design batteries that
9:44
Speaker 1: will last long enough. It's like sort of the quest
9:47
Speaker 1: with all technology is like you gotta make it affordable
9:50
Speaker 1: and uh light enough to operate and you know call yeah,
9:55
Speaker 1: I guess suffordable, we cost effective, but all these things
9:58
Speaker 1: and then technology is just a limits of technology. So
10:01
Speaker 1: material science basically wasn't where it needed to be and
10:05
Speaker 1: is only just now starting to get there. One of
10:07
Speaker 1: the other big problems, one of the other big hurdles
10:09
Speaker 1: with making a decent exoskeleton is the actuator, which are
10:13
Speaker 1: them the little muscles that move, the electro mechanical muscles
10:18
Speaker 1: that move in place of the human muscles. Um. But
10:24
Speaker 1: we're starting to get there. I mean, computing power is
10:27
Speaker 1: getting smaller and more um more um portable and incredibly powerful.
10:33
Speaker 1: That was the word I was looking for. And wait
10:35
Speaker 1: until we get into quantum computing. Man, it's going to
10:37
Speaker 1: take off like a rocket. I'm sure, um we are.
10:40
Speaker 1: Battery life is getting more portable, smaller, more durable, um.
10:47
Speaker 1: And apparently actuator science is really starting to come around.
10:51
Speaker 1: So that means that we have all the stuff in place.
10:53
Speaker 1: And apparently DARPA, the UM Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
11:00
Speaker 1: a k A the Secret Area people. I think Morgan
11:05
Speaker 1: Freeman heads up that division, is that right? Okay? So? Um?
11:10
Speaker 1: What's his name? Somebody? Fox? The Fox? Didn't I don't
11:15
Speaker 1: even remember in the Batman movies. Yeah, I can't remember. Okay,
11:19
Speaker 1: he's read to me always um, but not Red Fox. Um.
11:24
Speaker 1: So uh. The DARPA was apparently well aware that this
11:29
Speaker 1: the material science and computing power was starting to come around,
11:32
Speaker 1: and they put out another call for exoskeletons, and this
11:35
Speaker 1: one is starting to pay off, well, a call in
11:37
Speaker 1: the form of seventy five million dollars worth of funding,
11:40
Speaker 1: meaning hey, we can actually put a little dough towards
11:42
Speaker 1: this and they said they started a division called the
11:45
Speaker 1: Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation, which doesn't spell anything cool. No,
11:50
Speaker 1: they kind of dropped the ball there, um. And they
11:54
Speaker 1: wanted something that would accomplish five things. They had a directive.
11:58
Speaker 1: They wanted something that would, uh allow just a regular
12:01
Speaker 1: soldier to carry like hundreds of pounds of gear without
12:04
Speaker 1: much exertion. And this is one of the big applications.
12:07
Speaker 1: It's not to fly around and shoot people like Iron
12:09
Speaker 1: Man like a lot of it's kind of boring. It's
12:11
Speaker 1: like lifting supplies all day long, doing the work of
12:15
Speaker 1: three soldiers, basically loading missiles. Yeah, really heavy stuff that
12:20
Speaker 1: you might need a machine to do. You can now
12:22
Speaker 1: get a man machine. Uh. The second thing they wanted
12:25
Speaker 1: um to be able to handle heavy weapons that would
12:28
Speaker 1: require two people. Now you can do it with one.
12:31
Speaker 1: They wanted to be able to carry soldiers off the field,
12:33
Speaker 1: which is a huge deal. Uh. And one of the
12:36
Speaker 1: reasons my brother in law, who's a marine, says that
12:39
Speaker 1: they don't allow women in combat it is because a
12:42
Speaker 1: lot of you know, you need someone who can throw
12:44
Speaker 1: a soldier over their back and trudge through the desert
12:48
Speaker 1: for a day. If you need to. That's a common
12:50
Speaker 1: obstacle that's thrown up against female firefighters as well. Oh yeah,
12:54
Speaker 1: I get that. I'm all for equality, but you gotta
12:57
Speaker 1: take care of the people. You know what I'm saying.
13:00
Speaker 1: You're a dangerous water show, no man, I mean, I'm
13:03
Speaker 1: all for it. If there's a woman who can throw
13:05
Speaker 1: me on her back and carry me three miles through
13:06
Speaker 1: the desert, I'm all for it. But just don't leave
13:09
Speaker 1: me dying out there. Um. They wanted it to be uh,
13:15
Speaker 1: impenetrable and impenetrable to gunfire, which is pretty key too.
13:18
Speaker 1: There's the armor thing, the armor thing, and then finally
13:21
Speaker 1: I think this was the little kid and all of them.
13:23
Speaker 1: They wanted it to be able to jump really high,
13:26
Speaker 1: really really high, just like and and make it jump
13:29
Speaker 1: really high and say cool stuff. And there's actually, um,
13:32
Speaker 1: there's something called the springtail exoskeleton flying vehicle. Have you
13:37
Speaker 1: seen that one? Yeah? That I don't know about hovering
13:39
Speaker 1: motionlessly thousands of feet in the air. I don't think
13:42
Speaker 1: they're at that point yet. Yeah, and this didn't even
13:44
Speaker 1: this was not even exo skeleton it No, it was
13:47
Speaker 1: more like it was like a g I Joe. Um, machine.
13:50
Speaker 1: And it's not a jet pack either, which was in
13:53
Speaker 1: this article. No, what it is is, um, it's a
13:55
Speaker 1: couple of turbines, kind of like two fans. Yeah, um
14:00
Speaker 1: off to the side in a m with a ladder
14:04
Speaker 1: in between. But so you're standing under like under a ladder,
14:09
Speaker 1: which is just bad luck to begin with. And then
14:11
Speaker 1: connected to the ladder are two turbines on each side
14:14
Speaker 1: and you just hang on and you take off, which
14:17
Speaker 1: again I don't think it's a combat exoskeleton, but it
14:21
Speaker 1: would be very cool if your exoskeleton can fit inside.
14:25
Speaker 1: So you run five hundred miles carrying five hundred pounds
14:29
Speaker 1: for straight hours, and then you get in this thing
14:33
Speaker 1: and fly off. I think that's that's where we're trying
14:37
Speaker 1: to head here. It's like a little personal helicopter at
14:39
Speaker 1: this point though, Yeah, because I mean, if the company
14:41
Speaker 1: can crack the this code, they can make all manner
14:45
Speaker 1: of cool little things right and make them all compatible,
14:50
Speaker 1: like and then tell the army like, collect all eight
14:54
Speaker 1: but you have to buy the happy meal, and the
14:57
Speaker 1: happy meal cost you. We should talk about Arcos, which
15:00
Speaker 1: would later morph into Raytheon. They're one of the leaders
15:04
Speaker 1: in the exoskeleton racket. Um guy named Steve Jacobsen is
15:09
Speaker 1: the uh was the robot maker at Sarkos. I don't know,
15:12
Speaker 1: is he still let raytheon? You know, I don't know. Okay,
15:15
Speaker 1: Well he's what started it there though, and um he basically,
15:19
Speaker 1: uh devised a system where sensors would detect these little
15:24
Speaker 1: minute contractions in your own muscles, like if you go
15:27
Speaker 1: to like grab something, your muscle is going to contract
15:29
Speaker 1: a little bit. And uh, then there were a series
15:33
Speaker 1: of valves which regulate the flow of this high pressure
15:36
Speaker 1: juice to these joints. Those joints powered cylinders attached to
15:40
Speaker 1: cables that were sort of like tendons, and he sort
15:43
Speaker 1: of made a very basic mechanical version of how our
15:47
Speaker 1: own muscles and tendons operate well, like an extension of
15:49
Speaker 1: an augmentation of it, where basically these sensors go, oh,
15:52
Speaker 1: I know what you're but you let me and um,
15:55
Speaker 1: you you you will pull your arm off if you
15:57
Speaker 1: try to pick this up, But me, the exo skeleton
15:59
Speaker 1: knows what you're trying to do. And then after I'm sure,
16:02
Speaker 1: training for a few days in this thing, it just
16:04
Speaker 1: becomes second nature. Yeah, did you see the Iron Man guy,
16:08
Speaker 1: the dude from the movie No, I tested that video.
16:11
Speaker 1: I was looking for it. The guy was Clark Gregg.
16:14
Speaker 1: He was like the agent from the Avengers and the
16:17
Speaker 1: Ironman movies. And uh, he tried this thing on and
16:21
Speaker 1: like punched wood blocks and lifted these big weights and
16:26
Speaker 1: did push ups and it was pretty remarkable. That's pretty cool. Yeah,
16:29
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Yes, And they called this the XOS this
16:32
Speaker 1: is the first prototype, and the x OS well that's
16:34
Speaker 1: actually the x OS two nail Well that was Yeah,
16:37
Speaker 1: the x OS was the first prototype. But this is
16:39
Speaker 1: kind of like the UM the Leading Edge, Like I
16:43
Speaker 1: think the Pentagon and Darker are putting a lot of
16:46
Speaker 1: funding behind Raytheon's UM x OS. Yeah, they predict by
16:52
Speaker 1: they could have a tethered module, going, what does that mean?
16:56
Speaker 1: That means it's tethered. Do I know what the other means?
17:00
Speaker 1: That means it's attached to something like a cable, right, Oh,
17:04
Speaker 1: so like it's attached to a power source or something
17:06
Speaker 1: like that, something like that. UM, and then they're hoping
17:09
Speaker 1: for a non tethered version and because I mean it's like, hey,
17:13
Speaker 1: bad guys, come over here. Yeah exactly, I can't get you. Well,
17:17
Speaker 1: the t other one would be fine for dudes like
17:19
Speaker 1: loading trucks and things like that on day, but not
17:22
Speaker 1: in what they call the theater of war, you know,
17:27
Speaker 1: by the way, Winston Churchill, Yeah, I think so. Um,
17:32
Speaker 1: I think we forgot to mention that flying vehicle thing.
17:34
Speaker 1: That thing actually goes over a hundred miles an hour. Now, yeah,
17:37
Speaker 1: and the XOS runs at least ten miles an hour.
17:41
Speaker 1: And I remember reading that first and being like whatever,
17:45
Speaker 1: and then I think, oh, yeah, I can't run ten
17:47
Speaker 1: miles an hour at all. So this thing running ten
17:50
Speaker 1: miles an hour. And the point here is it's in dire.
17:53
Speaker 1: It's because as long as its battery is charged, how
17:56
Speaker 1: can we run. I mean you could run back get
17:59
Speaker 1: up there, but for like ten seconds and then your
18:01
Speaker 1: heart pops. I'm talking to myself. There's I mean ten
18:06
Speaker 1: miles an hour is Did you walk four miles an
18:08
Speaker 1: hour if you walked pretty fast? No? Not typically, No,
18:13
Speaker 1: that's getting into speedwalking. We do not walk four miles
18:16
Speaker 1: an hour like we walked maybe to two point five. Well,
18:21
Speaker 1: whenever I did hiking, we always based it on a
18:23
Speaker 1: four mile an hour pace. That's really fast. I guess
18:30
Speaker 1: I was a champion hiker thing. I guess you were.
18:32
Speaker 1: I should have cut that up. You're like, I used
18:33
Speaker 1: to do it on my hands. So, uh, like we said,
18:37
Speaker 1: Sarkos turned into Raytheon, and then there's other competing firms
18:41
Speaker 1: bought by Raytheon. What did I say, it turned into it?
18:46
Speaker 1: I mean there's a distinction. Then Berkeley Bionics is another company.
18:50
Speaker 1: Yeah there, um Civilian Peacetime. They're basically helping out the
18:56
Speaker 1: people who can't walk under their own power any longer.
19:00
Speaker 1: What they're getting really good at is uh, energy consumption solving,
19:04
Speaker 1: solving that problem and uh they had something called the
19:07
Speaker 1: Human Load Carrier which ran for about twenty hours without
19:11
Speaker 1: a recharge, which is a big deal. Yeah, it's a
19:14
Speaker 1: big leap forward. Did you see there's another one um
19:16
Speaker 1: Argo Medical Technologies has something called the rewalk there and
19:22
Speaker 1: it's like a hundred and fifty green which sounds like
19:24
Speaker 1: a lot, but at the same time, Um, if you're paralyzed,
19:28
Speaker 1: this thing lets you walk. Yeah, it's it's basically just
19:32
Speaker 1: mechanical legs attached to your regular legs with a little
19:36
Speaker 1: backpack on for the power. Yeah, and it's based on
19:40
Speaker 1: the segue. As far as like you lean forward and
19:43
Speaker 1: it walks forward. You lean back and it stops, which
19:46
Speaker 1: is good because as long as you are as long
19:49
Speaker 1: as you're not paralyzed, as long as you're you have
19:53
Speaker 1: mobility from the waist up, I would think you'd be
19:57
Speaker 1: able to use it because you leave above your waste
20:00
Speaker 1: that you're sparling. Yeah, and a lot. Actually we should
20:03
Speaker 1: point out a lot of these exoskeletons that even the
20:06
Speaker 1: army and the military are working on are Some of
20:10
Speaker 1: them are just waist down. Some of them are made
20:13
Speaker 1: for you know, punching and lifting and potentially flying and shooting.
20:16
Speaker 1: But they have a lot of waist down work too,
20:19
Speaker 1: which they said helps you like lift things anyway, because
20:21
Speaker 1: you're supposed to live with your legs, right, It just
20:23
Speaker 1: transfers the load to the ground. Um and yeah, we're
20:27
Speaker 1: also these don't look like um pants. They're not like
20:31
Speaker 1: just exoskeleton pants. Remember fleas um pants made of Teddy Bears.
20:37
Speaker 1: You don't remember this, you should look it up. It's
20:39
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. The bass player yeah from Red Hot Chili. Um.
20:43
Speaker 1: They're they're just kind of like braces with maybe a
20:48
Speaker 1: foot yeah, that you just step into like you can
20:51
Speaker 1: step into these things. Yeah, it looks like sort of
20:53
Speaker 1: like a high tech leg bright So that's a good
20:54
Speaker 1: way to put it. Yeah, except it walks for you.
20:57
Speaker 1: But pretty soon it's gonna look like an awesome suit
20:59
Speaker 1: of r that you can like run and jump and
21:01
Speaker 1: just hover and just do all sorts of cool stuff.
21:06
Speaker 1: Like really, reading this, I was like, oh my gosh,
21:08
Speaker 1: I can't believe this stuff is really good. Yeah, and
21:10
Speaker 1: then you see the videos and you think, wow, I
21:12
Speaker 1: bet it's clunky. And then you see the video of
21:13
Speaker 1: a guy that's never walked get up out of a
21:16
Speaker 1: chair and walk, and you think, man, I bet he
21:17
Speaker 1: didn't think it's clunky exactly because he's not trying to
21:20
Speaker 1: kill anybody. He's just trying to walk exactly. Now, we
21:23
Speaker 1: just need to get the price down for the average
21:25
Speaker 1: person who can't walk. Yeah, um, well, how much were
21:28
Speaker 1: those a hundred and fifteen grand? A hundred and fifty
21:31
Speaker 1: for the walk device? It's still not too bad, no,
21:34
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying, especially if your instruental chip in
21:38
Speaker 1: uh So, there's a company in Japan called Cyberdyne, and
21:42
Speaker 1: that sounds like a name that James Cameron would make up.
21:45
Speaker 1: But it's real. And they have made a real breakthrough
21:49
Speaker 1: in a couple of ways. One that they don't their
21:52
Speaker 1: howl machine h a l um. I wonder if Kubrick
21:56
Speaker 1: was live. I'm sure he's tired of people naming everything.
21:58
Speaker 1: How it's like enough already. Did you know someone impersonated him?
22:02
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they made a movie about it. Yeah, did
22:04
Speaker 1: you see the movie. It wouldn't be great, but John
22:08
Speaker 1: Malkovic always great except in that movie. Um. So they
22:13
Speaker 1: made advances in a couple of ways. One is that
22:15
Speaker 1: they don't um require the muscle contractions anymore. They pick
22:20
Speaker 1: up on your brain sensors, your electrical messages being sent
22:23
Speaker 1: from your brain. That's an enormous, huge breakthrough. Yeah, because
22:27
Speaker 1: think about it, you don't have to have any mobility whatsoever.
22:30
Speaker 1: Like you could be Stephen Hawking and like run around
22:32
Speaker 1: and like pick up stuff and people and throw them.
22:34
Speaker 1: If you can think it, you can do it. That
22:36
Speaker 1: should be their motto. And the other breakthrough is is
22:39
Speaker 1: I'm sure you saw the how it's like really streamlined
22:42
Speaker 1: at this point. The Japanese for like robotic design. Yeah,
22:46
Speaker 1: I mean it's pretty sleek. Yeah, they know what they're
22:47
Speaker 1: doing very much um, and now we can flash forward
22:52
Speaker 1: all the way to two thousand ten. You know, it
22:54
Speaker 1: would be really cool if they've made an exoskeleton, but
22:57
Speaker 1: they made it like look like an Andrew roid, so
23:00
Speaker 1: you put on like this kind of rubbery face too,
23:03
Speaker 1: and like it it had facial expressions and things like that.
23:07
Speaker 1: I think that would be better than this, like really
23:09
Speaker 1: cool suit to go into battle. Just terrorize anybody who
23:14
Speaker 1: saw like this like weird plastic ee human like thing
23:17
Speaker 1: coming at you with like fifty caliber machine gun holding
23:21
Speaker 1: it like it's nothing. My guess is the way the
23:24
Speaker 1: war is going down today. People are already pretty frightened
23:27
Speaker 1: by these soldiers coming in I guess in the dark
23:30
Speaker 1: and have laser sightings. Yeah, I think you're probably frightened anyway.
23:33
Speaker 1: Even old timey war is probably very frightening. Maybe we
23:36
Speaker 1: should not make it more frightening, now that I think
23:39
Speaker 1: about it. Okay, maybe we should make them look like
23:41
Speaker 1: little lambs that explode on contact. Alright, so we're in
23:46
Speaker 1: two thousand ten. Um, DARPA has made some serious headway. Now.
23:51
Speaker 1: Their suit weighs about fifty five pounds, which is like,
23:54
Speaker 1: I think this is the XOS is its two yeah,
23:58
Speaker 1: and uh, I can carry two hun pounds and with
24:01
Speaker 1: no fatigue going on, like you said, ten miles an hour,
24:05
Speaker 1: can run and that's pretty impressive. I think it's an
24:09
Speaker 1: it's good enough, especially if the thing can run. Yeah,
24:12
Speaker 1: because this thing is running for you. You're moving, but
24:15
Speaker 1: you're just barely moving and you're not going to get
24:17
Speaker 1: fatigued at running ten miles an hour. And I can imagine,
24:20
Speaker 1: like you can cover some ground in ten miles an hour.
24:22
Speaker 1: I think about this. You can cover ten miles in
24:25
Speaker 1: one single hour. That's straight. That's true. That's a lot,
24:29
Speaker 1: that's very true. Uh. Eventually they're gonna hook GPS systems
24:32
Speaker 1: up to this. Um it says one of the uses
24:35
Speaker 1: for soldiers would be to obtain info about approaching terrain.
24:40
Speaker 1: So I guess they could send him out ahead or whatever.
24:42
Speaker 1: My friend, have you seen Predator? Yeah, the first one.
24:45
Speaker 1: I don't think that that's not going to be inserted
24:48
Speaker 1: into this. This whole technology. The thermal thermal Yeah, thermal imaging.
24:55
Speaker 1: So you're just running along ten miles an hour and
24:58
Speaker 1: you have been for twenty straight hours, and you're running
25:01
Speaker 1: through say the desert, and you see everything thermally you're fine.
25:06
Speaker 1: You're gonna be just fine. Yeah, that's a good point,
25:09
Speaker 1: especially if you can jump really high, uh, really really high. Uh.
25:14
Speaker 1: And then they're also working on some uh some computerized
25:17
Speaker 1: fabric that they would wear that would like monitor all
25:20
Speaker 1: your systems. So I guess the point there is it
25:23
Speaker 1: would be light, Like I'm sure they can monitor your
25:26
Speaker 1: systems now, but it probably too bulky, So you want
25:28
Speaker 1: they're going, You're going to wear the computer as you
25:31
Speaker 1: wear the robot. Pretty amazing. Yeah, And what I mean,
25:35
Speaker 1: we're talking like we're not very far off from this
25:38
Speaker 1: ten fifteen years maybe, Yeah. And it's not all soldiers,
25:41
Speaker 1: like we said, they're using it a lot of the
25:43
Speaker 1: researches for people with spinal injuries and stuff like that.
25:46
Speaker 1: So pacifists can get on board too, exactly rich pacifists. Um. Also,
25:51
Speaker 1: I want to say, like I came across a really
25:52
Speaker 1: cool website called cybernetic zoo dot com. And if you're
25:56
Speaker 1: into like old timey popular sign and drawings of stuff
26:01
Speaker 1: like this school stuff this covered up in it, so
26:04
Speaker 1: I would recommend checking that out. You've got anything else
26:06
Speaker 1: on next to skeletons, I want one. That's what I
26:08
Speaker 1: got just give it a few years. Man, I'm gonna
26:11
Speaker 1: get you one that looks like W. C. Fields, okay,
26:15
Speaker 1: and the Man on the Prairie. It looked like a
26:17
Speaker 1: cross between W. C. Fields if w C. Fields mated
26:21
Speaker 1: with the Jetsins Robot made. This is what this thing
26:23
Speaker 1: would look like. Roxy Rosie, Rosie, I think so, I
26:28
Speaker 1: think Rosie. Uh. Okay. If you want to learn more
26:36
Speaker 1: about Exo skeletons, you can type it into the search
26:39
Speaker 1: bar at how stuffworks dot com and it'll bring up
26:42
Speaker 1: this awesome marketcle to check it out, I said, search bar,
26:45
Speaker 1: this your mail time is mat Uh. This one's kind
26:50
Speaker 1: of a downer, but I feel like we should read
26:52
Speaker 1: it because it's, you know, you need to get the
26:55
Speaker 1: stuff out there. I'm gonna call it abusive grandparents. Oh man,
26:58
Speaker 1: I saw this. Yeah. We we sort of made some
27:01
Speaker 1: jokes in our time travel cast about the grandfather paradox,
27:04
Speaker 1: and like, are the abusive grandparents because they're also sweet?
27:07
Speaker 1: And there are, of course there are. It's very sad.
27:10
Speaker 1: I think we knew that. Yeah. Hey, guys, today I
27:14
Speaker 1: was listening to the podcast and you brought up abuse
27:16
Speaker 1: of grandparents. You both sounded like it was a tough
27:19
Speaker 1: concept to swallow, and I agree it is that being said,
27:22
Speaker 1: I'm writing you to say that, yes, sadly, there are
27:24
Speaker 1: abuse of grandparents. I was raised from the age of
27:27
Speaker 1: five by my maternal grandmother, who was physically, mentally and
27:31
Speaker 1: emotionally abusive most of my life. She was abusive to
27:34
Speaker 1: every child who ever came to her house, her children, me,
27:37
Speaker 1: her nieces and nephews. She herself was heavily abused as
27:41
Speaker 1: a child by her mother and father that went on
27:44
Speaker 1: to be married twice to abuse of husbands. Unfortunately, she
27:47
Speaker 1: wasn't strong enough to break the cycle, and in fact,
27:49
Speaker 1: she encouraged my own mother, her daughter, to hit me.
27:53
Speaker 1: She kicked me out often, and at the age of twelve,
27:57
Speaker 1: I was sent to live with my dead beat father
27:59
Speaker 1: and his wife for a summer. At fourteen, she kicked
28:02
Speaker 1: me out to go live with my mother and her husband.
28:05
Speaker 1: I lived there for a few years, then back to
28:07
Speaker 1: my grandmother because her home was close from my school.
28:10
Speaker 1: Two weeks before my eighteenth birthday, she instructed my mother
28:12
Speaker 1: to beat me because I stayed home from school to
28:15
Speaker 1: go to the doctor for tonsilitis. I ran away that
28:18
Speaker 1: day and never went back. I moved in with my
28:20
Speaker 1: now husband and his parents, where I lived through the
28:23
Speaker 1: rest of my high school, senior year in college. It
28:26
Speaker 1: has been ten plus years and I have no contact
28:28
Speaker 1: with that grandmother. I've been in therapy for about four
28:31
Speaker 1: of those years. And uh so I just wanted to say, yes,
28:34
Speaker 1: there are abus of grandparents. Um. And in fact, knew
28:37
Speaker 1: of another girl at my age who was also being
28:39
Speaker 1: raised by interviews of grandmother, and that is Amanda in
28:42
Speaker 1: North Carolina. And I wrote her and she said that
28:45
Speaker 1: she has a nine month old girl and she is
28:49
Speaker 1: going to be the first one in the family to
28:52
Speaker 1: break this cycle of abuse. Yeah. So sat all the
28:58
Speaker 1: way around the grandmother that was abused and then had
29:01
Speaker 1: abuse of husbands and then took that out on her
29:03
Speaker 1: grandkids and nephews and daughters. And it's just the cycle
29:06
Speaker 1: of abuses horrific and it's up to you to break it. Well,
29:10
Speaker 1: thank you very much, Amanda in North Carolina. We appreciate
29:14
Speaker 1: the candor. That's awesome. I agreed, and congratulations to break
29:18
Speaker 1: into cycle. Um, well, let's see if you have a
29:21
Speaker 1: story that you want to share with us. When we
29:23
Speaker 1: were flipped with something we shouldn't have been we'd like
29:27
Speaker 1: to hear about it. Um. You can tweet to us
29:29
Speaker 1: at s y s K podcast. You can send us
29:32
Speaker 1: a Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know message
29:37
Speaker 1: post on our wall there that was a clumsy way
29:40
Speaker 1: to quit it. You can also send us a regular
29:43
Speaker 1: old email at stuff podcast at Discovery dot com. For
29:53
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
29:55
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, m