OT- Combat Exoskeleton.

[Randallw]

Picked this page up from another forum and thought it might interest some people. What I find amusing is that these are University students working to build technology for the military. What happened to the military building their own weapons and university students protesting against the military?.

http://bleex.me.berkeley.edu/bleex.htm

The other forum also had a mention of camouflage such as in Predator, but no links are mentioned.

[ May 01, 2004, 07:28: Message edited by: Randallw ]

[Kamog]

Wow, a powered exoskeleton... looks like a fun project for university. I wish we worked on stuff like that when I was in school... When I was a student in engineering, the people tended to be 'politically correct' and didn't want to work on anything related to weapons or the military because that would be violent and wrong.

I was working on a project with three other engineering students and we were going to design and build an electromagnetic railgun, and I started doing some research. Then one of the guys said let's not build a weapon and convinced the other two guys so I was overruled, and we ended up building a musical instrument.

[geoschmo]

Historically the university engineering and science departments have always done military research. Not exclusivly, of course, but when you need to raise money to pay for the new equipment, you go where teh money is.

It's the political science and other humanities students that were doing the protesting.

During the 60's a tiny few of the more radical activists even went as far as bombing the research labs. But the labs they were bombing were still part of the campus and staffed primarily by other students and professors.

[dogscoff]

Surely there would be civilian applications for this thing - rescue services spring to mind, and the construction industry.

Of course those industries don't have the same sort of funding as the military...

[sachmo]

I want one!

[EvilGenius4ABetterTomorro]

Wow Berkley hippies making robots! Maybe this armoured exoskeleton is being used to follow Phish around the U.S. Can you imagine some cute hippie girl "free dancing" in an armoured exoskeleton? It probably has built in joint launchers and petchouli aerosol applicators. You could lift a VW Micro Bus and swap out the motor no problemo.
There is also a paralell jet-pack project going on. Instead of a pack it's more of a T-frame that the operators is strapped (crucified) to. Sorry I forget the link. Now all we need is DARPA to bring these two ideas together like peanutbutter and chocolate.