Having a robotic exoskeleton is probably on the wish list of a very wide assortment of people, from small kids to army generals, and I’m sure that to those people and everybody in between, the proposal made by the Prosthesis Anti-Robot concept previewed here, is an appealing one.
Still in the very early stages of development, the project is hugely ambitious. It really wants to make the human one with the machine, but in the truest sense of the expression by having the mech not be autonomous at all, only responding to user inputs; the more skilled the wearer/rider, the swifter the progress being made.
Described as a mechanical cross between a gorilla, a T-rex and an…excavator, it would weigh some 3,500 kg (7,700 lbs) and would get around solely through the use of its four legs. The wearer would make it do its thing by moving his or her entire body, much in the same way an athlete would – the more athletic and perfected the motion, the better the performance that can be achieved.
The final goal is to have a racing league that would be both very spectacular and theoretically very close. All will be tailored to each user’s individual preferences and then fine-tuned on the fly (or trot, as it were).
The project is currently in search of funding on Indiegogo, and we could see one completed as early as next year. Its creator, the experienced Jonathan Tippet’s has even bigger plans for the future, as Gizmag reports and was quoted as saying: “Personally, my next machine will be a cat-like machine, the size of a bus, with the pilot suspended face down from its belly” – picture ten of those running alongside in unison for the full effect.
By Andrei Nedelea
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