Man designing 18 foot tall Mech Exoskeleton

Came across this in my interweb travels:

As Carlos Owens Jr. envisions it, the humanoid machine he's building will shoot nine-inch nails from the shoulders and 20-foot flames from the forearms. "You've got to have flame-throwers!" he says.

The red backlit eyes of his 18-foot hydraulic mecha - please don't call it a robot - will glow, but they're just for show. Five cameras will be the real eyes, allowing the operator riding inside the steel contraption to see via a laptop computer and flatscreen monitor rigged inside.

When it's all done, he'll have a walking exoskeleton that will make him stronger than a grizzly bear, he said. So what if this is the stuff of science fiction fantasies?

Looks quite interesting. I wonder if the Army will come an and snap his idea up, he could make a mint.

Man builds Mech Exoskeleton


Have a look....

Cool. Sounds like what they had in the movie Aliens.

Im sure this was posed before. Forgot the link tho, sorry.

This sounds like that other mech, that one supposedly made out of a car...

This article was written on 17th january 2005. I remember other mech threads, but way before that.

Mechs arnt really a new idea, sure aint seen a real one but countless games, and movies have involved the idea. Im pretty sure the first Practically one will be military, can u think of anyone else with the resources?

I would more likely expect see mech type of cargo transfer, biohazard etc where needed heavy lifting in possible other way dangerous area to human, still doubt those would be 18 feet tall. Also i would expect em more or less to be remote controlled and forms would be less likely humanoid as its prooven human isnt suitable in all, many species have traits that human adapt to machines and by so there could be spider, hybrid etc forms.

As for army i see waste of money to make mechs, alone the size create big problems, to substain such would cost fortunes, its easier to have simplified type of units with computer targeting that will not in the future probably have even chances to failure as processor capacity growth.

Mechs aren't really a new concept. There's all kinds of things even today that lend themselves the the concepts of mechs. Forklifts for instance - a mechanical creation to perform heavy lifting. Cars - mechanical creations to move faster. Take a look at some of the heavy construction and mining equipment. Those could all be considered the forefathers of mechs. The US has armed robots that they're sending into Iraq (unmanned yes, but they exist). The Japanese have been addressing the issue of replicating human two-legged movement, and have quite a bit of success with their prototype (if I'm not mistaken, it's Sony undertaking the project). All that's really left is to combine all of these qualities into a single machine with room for a human pilot.

One the human-sized humanoid walking robot is perfected (probably not far off, with the advances being made), then it's a simple matter or scaling it up to hold a human, and adding on whatever accessories needed to perform its intended task.

Technology already exists to use human movements to control software (in fact, that's how most motion capture is done for computer generated films, so it looks more realistic), so that not a big leap to put that into a machine (they're already using similar techniques in low-invasive microsurgery).

Practicality for the battlefield might be a little further off, because speed is also a necessity for that application, and with speed, comes further balance issues. However, I do see these things coming into play on a novelty level in the near future, not necessarily as toys, but as the next monster creations at car shows and the like.

We'll probably see 4+ legged models sooner than we'll see two legged models, simply because of the inherent stability - balance isn't as big an obstacle in an arachnid style walker.

I'd expect to see a continuation of the wheeled machines before any of that, though, simply because of the speed available. Wheels turn a whole lot easier at high speed with nothing more than a universal joint hooked to an engine than a comlpex combination of servos and motors would in a walker.

Yes, this topic has been posted before:

www.abovetopsecret.com...'

[edit on 6-2-2005 by ben91069]

"I'm 110 percent positive this will work," the soft-spoken apprentice ironworker said during a recent break from the all-consuming project taking shape in his parent's back yard. "Failure is not an option. I have no choice but to do this. If I don't do it, I will explode."


go figure

I love this story. It has been posted before, but he has just recently updated his site.
www.neogentronyx.com...

I'm saving up $10,000 so I can be the first on my block to have a deisel powered arena fighting mecha.

I carnt see any army taking up this idea any time soon!
Man in Lumbering Suit vs RPG? Guess who wins!
Maby in the future

The Army taking his idea is very believable. Imagine mechs that could hold nukes.. These would be great to take a city over.. such as a city in Iraq..

Originally posted by Special Case
I carnt see any army taking up this idea any time soon!
Man in Lumbering Suit vs RPG? Guess who wins!
Maby in the future

Yeah I cant see any military mechs in the near future, Perhaps armoured suits but not even half the size of that thing. More like a armoured suit the size of knight armour that I could see in 50 years. So a soldier could carry much more armour and ammo then he could normally.

There might be a market for these in "Battle bots" type of events perhaps even some use for them in construction.

Remember the machines in Terminator? The machines looked scary as the christians hell and carried awesome weapons. Now imagine those machines being remote controlled by a geek thats been picked on all his life, and he's a thousand miles away from the action.

We already have remote controlled planes that use hellfire misiles. The pilots are no where near the action. Its been said that we are in the last phase of aircraft that have humans onboard. The pilot can fly the plane safer, faster and have more manuverability by staying on the ground in a simulator.

Its only a matter of time before wars are fought this way as well. Our machines, remotely controlled, killing anyone who stands between us and the mission objective.

Its just a question of the technology and you can be assured they are working furiously on it.

Just my two nickels on the subject.

Love and light,

Wupy

Looks like Carlos is almost ready to make the beast walk, sans scaffolding.

His site has been updated as well.

He's added a new animated movie!!!

neogentronyx.com...

Originally posted by LeftBehind
He's added a new animated movie!!!

neogentronyx.com...

Ah Carlos, don't tell me you spent years and thousands to build this mech only to knock over yellow barrels and smash green Volkswagen bugs. Unless it's a special 'Car smashing' bug with the extra ability to knock over yellow barrels, then I could understand.

there's a great home built on the main page of this site. Totally mechanized, not quite a bi-pedel, but it's a damn good try for a civ.

www.trendpimp.com...

And i know i'd be silly to think that nobody's heard of Asimo, but just incase.

asimo.honda.com...


[edit on 5/4/2005 by VaporTrail]