Grizzly Man
Helmet

I received a lot of positive feedback for my previous post on building your own Iron Man inspired armor. However, several people felt like I needed to have something more sturdy than just the liquid body armor. Since I am all about meeting the needs of the people, I’m adding an additional armor option.

Grizzly Man
Suit

Inventor Troy Hurtubise has updated his personal armor. His 20 year “Project Grizzly” effort to build a personal protection suit that would protect its wearer from an ursine attacker has produced the latest iteration. This one, however, seems to be aimed at military use. He claims that the suit is bullet proof, weighs only 18 kg, and could be mass produced for only $2,000. You can read all about it here.

As a bonus, here is a video from YouTube showing some tests of his earlier suits. This man clearly believes in his armor. Warning: Don’t watch this while drinking.

How would you like your own suit of Iron Man inspired battle armor?

Iron Man

 

 
So here we are well into the 21st century. Technology has been moving along at a fantastic pace. This all leads me to one question: how far off are we from being able to actually build some form of Iron Man like armor?

This may come as a shock to many of you, but you see, I am not a professional writer. I am, in fact, an engineer. Due to my technocentric leanings, I’ve always been attracted to the speculative technology in comic books, with my favorite being Iron Man’s armor. So I decided to do a little research into possible technology for use in building some super-powered battle armor.

 

 
These are the basic requirements as I see them:

• Super Strength
• Armor
• Flight
• Man-Machine Interface
• Computing and Communications
• Power
• Repulsor Beams

Here are some interesting technologies that could give us a start.

I’m going to go out on a limb (pun intended)
and say that the part of the system labeled
“buttery pack” should in fact be labeled
“battery pack”, but I’ve been wrong before.

There are several research groups currently investigating powered exoskeletons. One that looks very promising is the HAL-5 Exoskeleton from Cyberdyne Systems. HAL stands for Hybrid Assisted Limb. The HAL-5 Exoskeleton employs several electromyogram sensors that detect the neural signals sent from the brain to the muscles. The HAL system decodes these signals and determines which muscles are intended to move and how much. It then augments the user’s desired motions using the system’s built in actuators. The more noble intended use of this technology is to help the elderly and physically disabled move around and lift heavy objects. But soup it up and there’s your super strength. (By the way, I did notice that the company has the same name as the infamous company in the Terminator movies that created the intelligent military supercomputer called Skynet which in turn triggered a nuclear Armageddon and then created the terminator robots to finish off the human survivors. Oh, yeah, and the HAL product itself shares the same name as the villainous artificial intelligence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Fairly unsettling name choices if you ask me.)

Since we are talking about designing battle armor, we ought to, you know, have some armor. Fitting the armor discretely into a briefcase isn’t a requirement, but we do want it to be lightweight and flexible. For that, let’s turn to liquid body armor. The basis for liquid body armor is shear thickening fluid (STF). According to the article, “During normal handling, the STF is very deformable and flows like a liquid. However, once a bullet or frag hits the vest, it transitions to a rigid material, which prevents the projectile from penetrating the Soldier’s body”. So, the material is fairly lightweight and flexible, but when it’s struck it momentarily turns extremely rigid and protects the wearer. Also according to the article, liquid armor is much more stab resistant than conventional body armor, which might come in handy for confrontations with ninjas and people trying to replicate the technology used by a short Canadian mutant.

Jet-Man Flying

Ok, here is where we kick it into high-gear cool. I know that in the comic books Iron Man flies using boot jets. I don’t think that is going to work here. Instead we’re going to fly in style with a winged jetpack. (Remember, we are not trying to exactly replicate the Iron Man armor, just start getting close.) For that, we turn to Jet-Man. Swiss aviator Yves Rossy has developed a winged jetpack that looks amazing. The wings are worn on the back like a backpack, and fold up when not in flight. The technology is still being developed and currently he can’t take off or land using the jetpack. So to test the flight capability he puts on the jetpack, gets into an airplane, and when the plane is high enough he jumps out. The wings then unfold, the jets kick in, and he’s off. He freaking flies around for a while until he runs out of fuel, then he deploys a parachute and comes back down to Earth. Check out the video below to see the jetpack in action. This is so cool.

The extremis technology is nowhere to be found so we need to use a more primitive interface technology. (I’m still on the fence about the extremis technology in the comic book anyway.) There are already electromyogram sensors built into the exoskeleton, and these types of sensors could probably be used to further interface the user and the armor. There is also some early work being done on non-invasive brain-computer interfaces that could be incorporated into a helmet. Combined with an audio interface and a head mounted display we would have a good start.

This is the easiest part to take care of. There is no shortage of off the shelf technology for inexpensive computing and mobile communications. Building a cell phone and WiFi/WiMax into the armor would be relatively easy. Embedding a mobile computer into the armor would be pretty easy as well. The biggest question is which operating system to use. Windows is not even an option. I think I’d prefer to put together my own custom Linux distro. Call it something like Stark Linux.

This might be the toughest part, since we would want to operate without recharging for a long time. Battery power densities are not great, but with all of the work being done in electric cars and fuel cell technology research, there may be an answer. It would be especially nice if the same fuel could be used to power the jets and the rest of the armor.

Back off!

Repulsor Beam technology doesn’t quite exist, so the next best thing would be a laser. (I’m not real excited by the War Machine style shoulder mounted guns.) The lasers of choice would probably come from Wicked Lasers. I’m not quite sure how to mount them inside the palm of the gauntlet, but I’d like to try to figure it out.

 

 
So there you have them. The basic components for an experimental prototype suit of battle armor inspired by Iron Man. None of the technologies are ready for prime time, but the possibility is starting to come into reach. All we need now is a billionaire benefactor who is interested in funding the additional research and engineering required. Any takers?

 
P.S. I wonder how long until we see an Internet show called “Pimp My Battle Armor”. I think I should be the host.

 

Don’t forget to check out part two of the battle armor series!