Bionics - Robotic legs

[chemoleo]

You are going to love this:

First I discovered an article in 'Der Spiegel', the German news magazine:
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,291681,00.html

What it says, is that a researcher at Berkely developed robotic legs to be worn on a normal person, as a sort of auxiliary - and those legs enable the person to carry >30 kg effortlessly!
On that page it gives a picture, so you can see what the robotic legs look like.

Then, upon searching further, you can find a more detaile article at
http://www.scienceblog.com/community/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=2402


I think this is awesome, now I could possibly walk up Mount Everest without losing my breath (that is, if I can still breathe at 8800 m).

However, what sucks, is that it works with a little petrol engine, so the soldier who is wearing those auxiliarly legs will have to refuel now and then at a petrol station!

Now let's hope someone will design decent fuel cells/batteries, and we all could do some serious hiking in the Australian desert, carrying 30 litres of water ;)


PS not surprisingly, this was funded by DARPA, those guys who also want to incorporate nanotechnology in their soldiers... for fast wound healing/sealing and such...