As you probably remember, the main character of the movie "Iron Man" assembled an exoskeleton in an Afghan cave from scrap parts. Jonathan Tippett is also obsessed with a similar idea - but on a larger scale. He is building a giant mechanical feedback exoskeleton.
Jonathan Tippett sits at a small red folding table next to the eatART lab in an industrial complex lined with shipping containers and warehouse hangars. On the horizon are the mountains of the North Coast, which have not yet lost their snow caps. I came this far to see Tippett jumping on his "giant leg". Alas, I was not lucky, his "leg" does not work, and this is a big failure for me. But since I am a guest, he gets up from his chair and leads me to the laboratory to at least show how impressive his creation looks.
GIANT LEG
The leg in question is a two-meter-high multi-joint structure, welded from steel pipes, with interwoven hydraulic drives, shock absorbers and pneumatic springs. The mechanism is bolted to the flat bed trailer via a 2m pivot tower, which in turn is secured to the trailer by four sturdy nylon straps. Hydraulic lines extend from the leg and connect to the pilot's seat on the ground next to the trailer. This chair, which Tippett calls the Exo-Frame, "Exorama", is based on a slightly modified unicycle saddle. It is equipped with a five-point harness and an articulated metal structure that is fixed to the arm using an inflatable cuff.
Prosthesis machine project: a person sitting inside sets the limbs of the machine in motion with their arms and legs.
The purpose of the invention is to expand human capabilities. Tippett and a group of volunteers trained their one and a half ton leg to respond directly to hand movements. She can move up and down and even bounce, multiplying the force that her owner exerts a hundredfold. The mechanical leg is also equipped with feedback, that is, it is able to return the applied effort to the owner. If she returns from a jump to the ground with a tilt, a slap proportional (albeit weakened) to this blow is transferred to the hand of the controlling person.
Promotional video:
Actually, the saddle must be mounted on top of this leg so that the owner can ride it, driving it like a vehicle. True, Tippett admits that this idea has not yet been tested in real conditions. Anyway, the unit has worked for no more than ten hours so far, but this is only the beginning.
Now Tippett and his assistants are trying to build batteries into the powertrain, which will make the mechanism reliable and mobile. This is the final stage, and the whole work took Tippett and his team three whole years. Soon, the "leg" will go on a tour of the festivals The Burning Man - Maker Faire - Ars Electronica, and there, among the understanding audience, it should cause a real sensation.
Even with such prospects, the work invested in this project, Tippett considers only the first stage. He calls his creation the Alpha Leg, implying that this is just a prototype and test platform for a future machine, which he considers to be his life's goal. It will be a human-controlled giant four-legged walking exo-skeleton Prosthesis ("Prosthesis"),
HISTORY OF FURS
Tippett's idea had many predecessors. In the 1960s, Ralph Mosher, an engineer at General Electric, developed a series of devices that multiply human strength through electromechanical elements. Among these machines was a four-legged walking carriage, as well as a giant claw - in the photographs, the engineers posing with this claw looked like some kind of cyborg monster. Now, looking back in time, we cannot help but be amazed at such large-scale projects, but they were eventually closed, as the control of the mechanisms turned out to be extremely difficult.
AT-AT walker from Star Wars
But the idea was gratefully picked up by Hollywood. Early examples are the AT-AT and AT-ST walkers from Star Wars and the loader used to combat aliens in Aliens. Then the “AMP power suit” appears in Avatar, and Jaeger, robots the size of a house, fighting monsters in the movie "Pacific Rim" These gigantic, human-driven machines spawned a genre of science fiction, which is now commonly called "mechs."
There were also attempts to implement the idea. Japanese agricultural machinery manufacturer Sakakibara Kikai has developed many giant machines. In the 1990s, the Finnish company Plustech Oy (later acquired by John Deere) developed a six-legged skidder for logging. In the videos advertising these cars, they look like clumsy monsters. But these slow lugs are not for Tippett. He needs a running, jumping, nimble car. “The world's first sports robot” is his slogan.
PUBLIC BEGINNINGS
And this is not frivolous arrogance. The Tippett team has already developed a concept for the future car. She must become a member of the "future league of robot racing", which already means preparing the appropriate logos, T-shirts, baseball caps and (of course, red overalls - the kind that Tippett himself wears when he is filming next to his mechanical leg. The team, pro video game developer Gerald Orban, shows me the graphical user interface he designs for the Prosthesis machine.
It's a color-rich animation pulsing with pie charts, just like the Iron Man movie. Smart marketing is a big part of the manufacturing process. Tippett's team is looking to raise $ 80,000 to develop their machine through Indiegogo.
Both the Alpha Leg and Prosthesis are supposed to be created in this atmosphere - with the help of volunteers, with haphazard funding, in a world where they work in the evenings. Still, there is plenty of reason to be optimistic - the evidence is scattered throughout the eat ART lab. Standing at the entrance is the Mondo Spider, a fully functional eight-legged walking carriage that is as easy to operate as a wheeled tractor. Tippett built the unit in 2006, and at the back of the lab sits Titanoboa, a nightmarish 15-meter electromechanical snake built last year by Tippett's associate Charlie Brinson.
Engineering intuition first manifested itself in Tippett as a child, when he drove cars with a remote
driving on the track rolled behind his home in Oakville, Ontario. “I could spend hours fiddling around in the basement adjusting the suspension of my ATV,” Tippett says. He graduated from the University of British Columbia with an engineering degree and has worked professionally in hydraulic drives in marine engineering, fuel cells and medical implants. And now he works part-time in a medical company, developing prostheses.
Now 39 years old, he believes that it will take another two years to create the Prosthesis apparatus. I ask him what he will do when the car is ready, and I am surprised to hear that his future plans are purely domestic in nature, “Perhaps I’ll start a family,” he said. - I'll get married, have children. But then his eyes light up: "Although, I have a project of another machine ripening here."
"Popular Mechanics" October 2013