It’s happened, by golly the Japanese have finally done it. A group of brilliant and dedicated students, presumably engineers, spent the last six months working on a project they called Skeletonics (a combination of the words skeleton and mechanics), to present to you – that’s right, a wonderful, amazing and, ironically, non-mechanical exoskeleton.
Powerless Power-Armor
The exoskeleton is not exactly what you might be imagining. I mean, it doesn’t do a lot of the things that the power armor and meka machines in Halo, Gundam, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (pukes in mouth) might lead you to believe. As a matter of fact, the exoskeleton really doesn’t do much. It’s more like a complex re-invention of “The Claw”, you know – that thing your grandma uses to reach Tupperware from above the fridge. But none of this really matters since it’s still cooler than anything I’ve seen so far. On top of that, the guys in this video look like there having one hell-of-a time messing around with it.
The first half of the video shows how they amplified the movements of the guy in the harness through the suit. There’s a bunch of Japanese writing peppered throughout the video that I assume explains a lot more than what I can glean from my own command of the language (nothing). So, if you do happen to understand Japanese, howz about leaving us a comment? If you want to skip ahead to the real action, go to 3:16 for the grand unveiling.
How’s The Weather Down There?
The exoskeleton is made out of aluminum sheets, pipes and what looks like break cables from a bicycle to control the fingers. At around 5:04, the guys demonstrate a cool water powered rocket that shoots out of the lower arm, an attachment that’s as pointless as it is hilarious. Towards the end of the video, there are a series of sketch-comedy-like moments that really give life to the large but lithe exoskeleton.
Children Beware
For more cool human upgrades, check out this actual Power Loaded Exoskeleton or this Bipedal Exoskeleton For Children.
Via: PopSci
