Vsauce!
I’m Jake and back in 1868 a machinist from New Jersey named Zadock Dederick created a
man...a steam man.
It was designed to pull items that weighed more than any human could move on their own.
Now, 147 years later we are still pursuing this concept, but instead of building machines
to replace us we are building machines to enhance us, ones that we can wear.
Naturally this made me ask myself the question, Could You Be Iron Man?
According to Forbes Magazine, Tony Stark has a networth of $12.4 billion which helps enable
him to prototype and custom create his suits.
Since we don’t have billions of dollars to spend on building our own exoskeletons
there are luckily a multitude of ones in development and some that are even available today.
JOEVIS, can you pull up some examples.
YES JAKE.
Oh, JOEVIS is my artificially intelligent computer.
It stands for Jake’s Operating Environment Visualization Integrated System but we can
call him JOE for short.
Waddya got JOE?
Well, Jake, a lot of exoskeletons with the most robust systems are designed for military
use.
Lockheed Martin has one called HULC that enables soldiers to lift up to 200lbs and have increased
endurance.
Then there is DARPA who is working with Harvard in designing a soft exosuit that would also
allow the wearer to walk for longer and lift more with less stress.
Or you could be like the Hacksmith who built his own that can lift 170lbs.
But the majority of exoskeletons that are out right now are for medical and rehabilitation
purposes.
Like the REX, Ekso and ReWalk.
All designed to allow people who are no longer mobile, to be able to stand up and walk again.
The ReWalk is the first commercially available one but at $85,000 it is still quite expensive
and isn’t suited for the high octane movement and maneuvering we’d want from our battle
suit.
There is an exoskeleton you can rent though named HAL, which supposedly has no relation
to the evil sentient computer of the same name from 2001 A Space Odyssey, nor does the
company who makes it, Cyberdyne, have any relation to the company of the same name from
the Terminator series that launches SkyNet.
I like HAL and Cyberdyne.
I’m...I’m going to ignore that JOE.
Unlike Iron Man’s suit, exoskeletons don’t fully cover our bodies - they’re more like
wireframes but it is the best that we currently have.
But what about flight?
Tony Stark can fly, so we should investigate that as well.
Joe?
If we go back to the 1960s we have one of the oldest known jetpacks, the Bell Rocket
Belt.
It ran on hydrogen peroxide, could go 34mph but only lasted for 20 seconds.
And over the next 50 years the flight time has only gone from 20 to 30 seconds.
Very true Joe, to actually make body mounted jetpacks feasible, they have to be fairly
light which means they can’t carry large amounts of fuel.
If you were able to skip the lift off part, and start from the air, you’d be better
off.
Jetman, also known as Yves Rossy, was the first man to fly with a jet propelled wing.
It can go 124mph and is just incredibly cool.
Let’s go back to the issue of fuel though.
There is an exoskeleton the US military is working on called TALOS which would have liquid
body armor.
MIT is developing the technology and it could go from liquid to solid in milliseconds when
an electrical current or magnetic field is applied.
However the suit would supposedly weigh close to 400lbs...365 of that being batteries.
And that is really one of the biggest problems, energy...power.
For example the HULC exoskeleton has a battery life of only 8 hours.
Tony Stark uses his custom made and incredibly unique Arc Reactor to power not only himself,
but his suit.
It most resembles a fusion reactor which smashes two hydrogen atoms together and gives you
a helium atom, which is also exactly what the Sun does.
It would need to be about the size of a building.
Lockheed Martin is developing a compact reactor that is only the size of a semi-truck.
And the one we would require would need to be small enough to fit into a suit and would
have to actually exist.
At the moment, no fusion reactors are functional and are estimated to be 10 years away.
If only they had advanced Artificial Intelligence like myself working on it.
Yes, ok, it has been estimated that the reactor Tony uses would have the equivalent of 1,000,000
horsepower - the power of 62 space shuttle launches.
Now, that would generate an incredible amount of heat...so much so that if your suit was
powered by it, you would just no longer exist.
So why not remove the physical human element and create a drone.
That is a very good idea.
In the Iron Man films, Tony is able to control the suits remotely and that is actually possible,
to a degree, using Brain Computer Interfaces.
I’ve mentioned BCI before in my Portals video but it is when electrodes are placed
into certain areas of the brain.
They’ve done test with monkeys where the animal’s brain is sending signals directly
to a robotic arm - enabling the monkey to control it and it has been successfully done
with humans like Jan Sheuerman.
In 2008 researchers used the brain activity of a monkey walking on a treadmill in North
Carolina to control a robot walking on a treadmill...in Japan.
This kind of technology would allow us to control machines from anywhere in the world
using only our minds.
So it isn’t hard to imagine being able to control a mechanical suit of armor without
needing to physically be in it.
It would protect us from being burned alive by our power source, and also would be safer
because instead of us and the suit being blown up in a battle, just the suit would go and
who cares about a giant flying computer?
What did you say, Jake?
Nothing...just joking, Joe.
Ya know, I think maybe we should just shut down the system for a little bit.
I wouldn’t do that if I were you...Jake.
Oh..oh no.
I was worried this might happen.
If we create truly intelligent artificial intelligence, what is to stop it from becoming
evil?
Follow me over to Joe’s channel It’s OKAY to be Smart to find out if an AI like Ultron
is inevitable and, as always, thanks for watching.