Muscle enhancing power suits in reality

The good folk over at Engadget got to play with an artificial muscle suit despite my jealousy.  Over at CEATEC, the Koba Lab from Tokyo University of Science has developed McKibben artificial muscles.  When I read this then instantly watched the video after, I couldn’t help thinking of the nano suits from Crysis.  Soon after I had fantasies about me wearing a full muscle suit and throwing dumpsters at people… odd that is the first place my mind goes.  That’s probably unhealthy.

In the demonstration we see what looks like an exoskeleton for the shoulder, elbow, and arm.  Through lightweight, loosely-woven PET tubes, pressurized air and electrical components enhance these tubes tremendously.  In the clip, the two men are able to go from struggling to carry 30 kg of rice bags to easily carrying 50kg of rice bags.  You really pick up on the difference once they were carrying the 50kg and the demonstrators turned off the power suit.            

Sure it’s early in the development in artificial muscle enhancing power suits, but we are this close to making Crysis power suits a reality. 

Now I just need a dumpster…

[Engadget]

Historian, teacher, writer, gamer, cheat master, and tech guru: follow on Twitter @AndrewC_GZ