At least if we’re ever invaded by aliens spawned from the mind of H.R. Giger, we’ll be able to wrestle them and then lob them out of an airlock or something. That’s the first thing that the Stuff gang thought of when we came across this footage of a robotic exosuit, courtesy of the BBC.
The robo-suit, as its creators at the Perceptual Robotics Laboratory in San Giuliano Terme, Italy, call it, is designed to augment a human’s strength. At present this “body extender” is able to confer a lifting ability of 50kg per arm on its operator, for a total of 100kg of lift. Now we know that there are folks out there who can bench this much but we’re not so certain they’d be useful in the event of a natural disaster or accident scene.
An earthquake is given as one possible scenario where this body extender might be deployed, where heavy lifting is required on short notice. The advantage that an exoskeleton has over a wholly robotic rescue unit is that it doesn’t need to be programmed before setting out. The downside is that it’s still not much use in a radiation disaster. But hopefully they start making larger units before the chest-bursters turn up.
Source: BBC (YouTube) via PopSci