The folks over at Raytheon have been working to re-vamp their Exoskeleton suit, and have very recently revealed their Mark II model. The original XOS, which was basically a proof of concept, was revealed in 2006 by Sarcos, the then owners of the XOS design. Since then, Raytheon has been developing the XOS Mark II, and now we have a functional model to watch in action.
The suit is supposed to be powerful enough to make 200lbs of weights feel like 20lbs. As amazing as this is, compared to the XOS original, this model is lighter, and uses a lot less power. It’s also a lot more resistant to the environment, which means that under difficult working conditions, this design would be helpful. The robotics suit is being designed specifically for military use, and yet is fast and light enough to play soccer in. The suit was cited as being the closest thing to an Iron Man suit, and is capable of doing more than just lifting. The demonstration video shows the suit doing push ups; and the engineer who was testing the suit says that it doesn’t feel any different with weights and unloaded. He was also capable of splitting wooden blocks with a single punch.
The strength of the XOS2 is that it lifts any weight for the person wearing it, so that the person only feels the weight of the suit. With minimal pressure from any other weights, the suit makes it capable of working under many different conditions. Another thing too, is that the untethered version will be released as soon as engineers can lower the power consumption to 20% of the original model, and they’ve already set a timeline. They’re hoping the XOS2 will be used in theater in about 5 years for the tethered version, and 3-5 years after that for the untethered version. Design wise, the XOS2 looks like a major step forward in terms of labor and industrial technology, and is definitely worth keeping an eye out for.
You can check out the video demonstrations of the full model below.
You can check out more cool robots, like these soccer robots or REX, the robotic Exoskeleton.
