John of Argghhh! has a post about a robotic exoskeleton intended to help soldiers and firefighters carry heavy loads. Sci-fi fans will, of course, think of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and other works featuring soldiers equipped with powered armor. This kind of technology also has lots of civilian applications, most obviously that of helping disabled people walk.

I did my doctoral work in robotics, so I’m professionally interested in this, you might say. What I really want to know is what kind of power source they’re using, and how long it lasts. One of the big problems in mobile robots is energy density. Most use batteries, which as we know are bulky, heavy, and don’t last very long. For outdoor robots, a gasoline engine might be an option, but I don’t think that would be welcome indoors.

The project’s website has a pdf file containing a little sidebar from Jane’s Defense Weekly which says that they are developing a power source that would run “for 24 hours on one tank of fuel…[that] would initially burn propane or gasoline….” I wonder what they have in mind?

I perused the Berkely lab’s website, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find any page where I could download their publications. Maybe I missed it, so if you alert readers find such a page, please let me know. This is something that used to drive me nuts when I was in grad school. Japanese robotics labs tended to be really bad about not posting their publications online. Come on people; the web was INVENTED to publish scientific research.

Posted in uncategorized on March 11th, 2004 by Thibodeaux | RSS 2.0 |