Robotic suit gives shipyard workers super strength
newscientist.com"At the time, most of the yards we toured were significantly more advanced in robotic welding than the US yards performing naval ship construction, and had been for a long time," Gene Mitchell, the retired US Navy officer who led the research told New Scientist.
That's depressing. I don't know why many US industrial firms seem so slow to do their own training, but instead complain about a shortage of skilled workers. There's not much point in spending a lot of money training in some highly specialized area like heavy robotics if you don't know where the demand is.
US Navy personnel who tour the newest generation of Korean and Japanese warships are universally astounded by the high quality, attention-to-detail, and overall great design. Without exception, our sailors come off the ships blinking and asking "Why aren't we buying these?"
Totally anecdotal - I've seen a lot of foreigners react in the same (but opposite) way when they come to the US.
i.e. driving on major roads around NYC, visiting schools, looking at houses, etc.
"Wow, it looks like it's half finished"
"Everything is so dirty"
"It's all covered in graffiti and falling down"
etc., etc.
NYC is an awesome city, but you have to admit that walking around certain streets of NYC is not really a fair comparison to touring a top-of-the-line factory!
There's that quote about a first world country for the rich and a third world country for the poor...
> walking around certain streets of NYC is not really a fair comparison to touring a top-of-the-line factory!
I was talking about walking around foreign cities compared to walking around cities in the US. The difference is stark.
NYC roads themselves make a good case for driving 4WD SUVs. What measly taxes we must be paying are clearly all spent on keeping the subway system clean and affordable.
Do you have a source for this?
Sorry, should have been more clear. This is based solely on my personal experience and only applies to surface ships; I don't know anything about submarines.
Commercial shipbuilding in the US has long sailed. The industry leaders are now Japan, South Korea, and China. Nobody in the US is even trying to keep up, because there's no way to compete with the cheap labor force and efficient yards of those countries. For the most part, the only ships still being built in the US are for the military.
I was shocked to hear this so I did some research. As it turns out, it has a lot to do with foreign subsidies, similar to solar power.
Apparently up until 1981, the US had the Construction differential subsidy program [1][2] that subsided shipbuilding construction. During the Regan administration, the US eliminated subsidies whereas countries in Asia did not. Now the top 10 shipbuilding countries are in China, Korea, or Japan [3][4].
Outside of a few exceptions, such as a 1920 law forcing US-based natural gas to only be transported on American made/manned ships [5], the US shipbuilding industry has one customer: the military. Without additional subsidies it's unlikely the US can effectively compete with places like China, which continue to increase subsidies for shipbuilders [6].
In this political climate (especially post-Solyndra, post ethanol-subsidy) I think it's unlikely the federal government would increase subsidies for a private industry. On one hand, this might not be a bad thing: Chinese-subsidized industries don't always work out the way they planned (e.g., the construction of ghost towns). However if the military doesn't keep the industry up-to-date technologically, a shipbuilding tech gap could form, which might impact national security.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Shipbuilding_Program
[2] http://www.marinelink.com/article/shipbuilding/the-future-am...
[3] http://www.marineinsight.com/marine/marine-news/headline/top...
[4] http://thediplomat.com/2012/11/u-s-navy-take-notice-china-is...
[5] http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/09/20/boom-in-natural-gas-pro...
[6] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/09/us-china-shipping-...
You're completely right.
The U.S. is so far ahead of the rest of the world in almost all defense technologies that it's a hard pill to swallow politically that there could be one relatively-small segment (non-nuclear surface warships) that we'd be better off actually buying from our closest allies.
We export so much defense equipment to our allies, that you'd think it would be okay to maybe possibly import one thing that's built better and cheaper elsewhere. But no, we'd rather subsidize our shipyards to continue churning out ships designed in the 1980s...
The '1920 law' aka 'Jones Act' is not limited to natural gas. It deals with transport of goods where both the source and destination are American ports.
You're right with regards to the claim that South Korea and China have lower labor costs. You're not right with regards to Japan.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ichcc.pdf
If you have better data, I'm happy to take a look at them, but in my limited association with high-tech Japanese manufacturing this was basically the canonical example of "Ridiculously untrue things the Americans believe about us."
China has a cheaper labor force, but Japan and South Korea? And how does this fit with their intensive use of robots, which are presumably meant to reduce labor costs?
Both Japan and Korea used to have cheaper labor costs and they used that advantage along with manufacturing improvements to maintain their industries to the present day through economies of scale and lack of competition from other countries (once they've been driven out of the industry, like the U.S. and Greece).
It's roughly analogous as if the rise of Honda and Toyota in the 1960s ran all the U.S. car manufacturers out of business.
Good-sounding theory, but I can't help noticing the continued existence of several US car manufacturers, even if they've been through bankruptcy proceedings along the way.
They've always been rescued / bailed out (IIRC) by the US government whenever they were on the verge of collapse - they're pretty big employers (direct and indirect), and I'm pretty sure it's also a matter of pride for the US ('Murca, yeah!). I somehow doubt the US government would be as inclined to bail out, for example, Google or another major tech company if they got into trouble.
On the other hand, there's plenty of competing companies that could bail out / buy (parts of) Google (or some other company) if they got into trouble - see MySpace and Digg and major web companies like that that became obsolete and effectively went out of business.
Businesses that don't effectively externalize costs are at a competitive disadvantage to those that do, right?
A very astute observation.
I think this is an amazing and inevitable outcome. However, sort of disappointed by the 60 kilo max. I feel like these suits need to be an ordwr of magnitude better than humans to be viable. There are certainly people who can lift 125lb objects. I understand that fatigue and uniformity factor in, but it will be great to see 300lb+ suits
I have a neighbor who is 68 years old with a small build and routinely lifts and moves 250lb 18-24' horse gates all by himself. He hired me for a few days for help him do a large horse gate move and I blew out my back on the third day. I have a large build (235lb 6'1"). I have no problem lifting two 50lb feed bags even though I am out of shape. I was very surprised that that this device could only lift 60 kilos (132lb). I wonder what the battery life is and/or if it is coupled with a power source/cable.
That's overengineering--being able to consistently lift 60-100 kg. would be quite useful.
Right. That was sort of my point, I understand it is useful to consistently lift and move heavy stiff without fatiguing oneself. I think if you were to improve it to say, 250kg it would fit a lot more usecases. Overengineering, in my opinion, would be asking for an iron man suit.
I suspect that when you get up to 250kg you run into stability issues as much as strength issues. Even if you could lift it easily, it would be really tricky to hold it in a way that you won't tip over and drop it.
Yeah, it'd need to be combined with research going on atm with bipedal robots; they'd have to be able to keep themselves balanced.
Or just have really heavy "feet". That's what the big block of steel/concrete on the back of a forklift is for.
Yeah, but automated balancing might be significantly more energy efficient than sticking quater-ton blocks of metals to the feet.
Maybe you could use the extra mass to provide super-protective steel toe caps, as per a comment above :-)
Hate to see what happens when a bug causes the wrong motors to fire and the thing breaks all of your bones. Be awesome to use one though all the same.
It seems feasible to design an exoskeleton suit that is mechanically incapable of breaking your bones. You could pick some flexibility constraints that define a conservative model of how human limbs can bend and swivel, and then design the hardware with physical interlocks that prevent it from moving beyond those limits. Picture an elbow joint that has a metal flange situated such that if the motor tried to extend the arm beyond the normal human straight elbow angle it would be mechanically blocked.
The thing that I find more worrisome is the fact that little squishy people will be handling things that are so heavy that, if fumbled, would carry enough momentum to rip right through them. Imagine letting a 250 kg piece of metal slip -- if it hit your flesh, that's a problem. Once the strength of these suits gets high enough to handle loads like that I think we'll have to see more actual exoskeleton armor to protect the pilots.
A 100kg limit is feasible, that's not yet heavy enough (I think?) to cause major damage if a mishap happens. ATM workers are handling loads like that - and heavier - with cranes and clever tools that make the pieces they handle effectively weightless (check car assembly workers for example), those also don't carry that much risk when handled right. Laws and regulations for these will be just as stringent as other industrial tools, I'm sure.
Your basic steel toe cap work boots have a toe cap rated for a 200 joule impact. That's equivalent to a 20kg weight dropped from 1 meter.
I sure wouldn't want to drop 100kg of weight on my foot from 1 meter :)
Yeah... they had those in 1958:
Iron Man: Ralph Mosher, an engineer working for General Electric in the 1950s, developed a robotic exoskeleton called Hardiman. The mechanical suit, consisting of powered arms and legs, could give him superhuman strength. Mosher subsequently made a simpler version that permitted him to sit in his chair and pick up refrigerators.
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/09/07/telepresence-robots-ne...
> it can lift objects with a mass of up to 30 kilograms.
Shouldn't factory workers be able to do that anyway? Or even 60kg.
30 kilograms is 66 pounds. OSHA recommends a two-man lift for weights over 50 pounds : https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/electricalcontractors/mater...
So any child above 5 years of age needs two parents to carry them?
Carrying your own offspring is not the same as being employed to carry weight all day (and not necessarily because you really like that profession.) The regulation is in place to protect the worker, be it from the employer or those who don't know any better from themselves.
But 50lbs is pretty light. If you're in reasonable shape moving objects of that weight every day should be fine. It's only (approximately) one big Olympic plate.
That's not just some thing they happen to do once a day. Its what they do ALL day, in addition to many other things. The purpose of the exoskeleton isn't really to increase how much you can lift. Its to make it so it is less tiring.
No. Try carrying 30 kilograms all the time, everyday. Unless you hire only weightlifters/football players to work your factory.
Next time you're at the gym, grab a 30lb dumbbell in each hand, walk across the gym, set them down, pick them up again, walk back to starting point, repeat for a few hours. Let us know how it goes.
Yeah. I can't help thinking they've defined down "Super Strength" somewhat.
Let's be honest, if these things become commonplace in shipyards - we are all going to want one.
There's pretty much no reason not to use them everywhere. Every construction site on the planet would benefit from augmented workers. A ridiculous amount of heavy lifting is still involved in putting up just normal buildings, and an injured worker is a big cost and set back.
Family is in heavy construction, and I think there might be a bit of a misconception on what holds workers back - its not weight.
The most common complaint that I hear is that between climbing and harnesses, flexibility suffers. Adding in an exoskeleton would probably not be the best idea in that case.
just an extension of all the work being put towards getting people who suffer disabilities back into regular life. I have seen some "suits" that help people walk again, talk about giving freedom back.
Soon we will be able to fight off the Aliens.
Why is this technology being wasted on shipyards when I could be using it to reenact scenes from Aliens and play rock em sock em cyborg in my backyard?