Robots are cool and all. They can fetch us beers and open hard to open jars of pasta sauce and stuff. However, the robots are not part of us. They remain, forever and always, part of the external world. We want to be the robots! That’s where the marvelous world of exoskeletons come in. We can don these super suits and before long become regular, bona-fide iron men(without the Downey-esque snark.) These devices are used to give humans super human strength and just to make disabled people walk again. Here is one that does the former, and it looks like it is straight out of Aliens to boot.
Panasonic, who you may remember from making all of those televisions and VCRs and stuff since tech time began, are throwing their hat into the monstrous exoskeleton ring(hint, don’t go in this ring.) They have paired up with a company called ActiveLink to create two powerful exoskeletons called Power Loaders, a clear homage to the Caterpillar P-5000 Work Loader from the aforementioned space flick. The more powerful of these two bad boys can easily carry hundreds of pounds from point A to point B without the wearer breaking a single sweat(unless they just sweat easily, in which case maybe go see the doctor.)
The coolest part? These will begin manufacture later in the year and are expected to be on store shelves(well, exoskeleton stores) by 2015. Even cooler? The Power Loader Lite, the less powerful of the two, will retail for only $5,000, which is a fantastic deal to become part robot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSo6C_gE4w8
