在技术领域,创新大致相当于应用的想象力。创新者 - 最令人震惊的新产品和企业的建设者 - 采取他们的见解,并将它们从野外想法转换为可行的现实。那么,它应该不令人惊讶,即技术和好莱坞梦工厂的数字边缘是合并的;每个人都取决于一个关于我们未来的给定方面的故事的投影。(值得注意的是,在过去的15年里,在主流科幻电影中是一个跳跃。)最近,这两个行业都在美国军队竞标的特定项目中融合在一起。
在过去的一个月里,美国军队开始公开讨论一个新的机器人轻型炮兵套装,非常像罗伯特唐尼Jr.在钢铁侠特许经营权。战术突击灯操作员套装,或踝关节,采用可穿戴计算机和传感器的柔性均匀,有助于保护士兵免受伤害。根据项目的最终结果,它也可能是一种机器人外骨骼,这些士兵在包括水和弹药的数十英镑的重量方面,士兵必须进入几乎所有战斗情况。
增加士兵的逃避和追逐的能力emies — and to understand their own health and environment — would save lives and greatly improve their efficacy. Indeed, the concept and its worth are so obvious it might seem that TALOS would have been in the works long before Iron Man — though Special Operations Command’s first call for white papers and technologies toward its construction began in May 2013. Most of the recent press around TALOS, too, has focused on the fact that the military has brought on San Fernando, California–based special effects studio Legacy Effects with the deceptively simple goal of bringing Iron Man to life.
钢铁侠是否可以带到生活中是另一回事:只有那些遵守物理法则的梦想倾向于进入物理世界。“当你为电影做点什么时,这一切都是 - 相信,而对于那些真正不会被案件的军事,”遗产效果联合创始人Lindsay Macgowan华尔街日报。The fully loaded Hollywood version of Iron Man’s suit — a perfect, virtually impenetrable, sensor-loaded combat suit — is certainly out of motor-actuated reach for next year’s war fighters, doubly or triply so because the project is backed by a budget of only $10 million a year.
在描述的方式,某种混乱仍然存在。它是否会轻便,足够灵活,可以作为增强的“制服”,因为一些评论员称为它?或者它需要自己的外骨骼,以弥补士兵可能是较重的负担?(唐尼施的钢铁侠套装重达90磅。)
Richmond, California–based Ekso Bionics, which primarily designs systems to aid patients with stroke-induced paralysis or other extreme challenges to mobility, is working to create such an exoskeleton — the kind of design that would drive TALOS away from a lightweight uniform toward something closer to a suit that would enclose the soldier’s body. Ekso’s existing model can assist patients with walking by sensing and amplifying their muscle movements; the relevance for the TALOS project is obvious.
Whatever its external structuring might be, TALOS is likely to include a wearable computer, similar to Google Glass, to help soldiers aim their weapons. (TrackingPoint, an application for Google Glass, gives users the ability to shoot around corners, an advantage in close combat.) Targeting technologies will surely find their place among TALOS’s gizmos. The Air Force is also testing Google Glass as part of a program designed to increase the capabilities of parachute-jumping medical personnel, who as soon as they land on the ground must rapidly sort through inputs about sites from above and track the needs of wounded soldiers. Fittingly, the name of that program is Battlefield Air Targeting Man-Aided Knowledge, or BATMAN. One gets the sense that the acronym may have been reverse engineered.
无人机战争升级了没有人类伤亡的战斗人数 - 至少到雇用无人机的党。新的战场技术延长了步兵的能力,以促进敌人,捍卫和更好的保护 - 甚至愈合 - 甚至要愈合 - 本身就会接受无人机在空中开始的趋势。像谷歌玻璃和其他可穿戴物的计算系统提供的认知增强会使士兵更容易追踪并彼此沟通并立即衡量的指挥官,并准确地衡量部队的健康和地位。国防高级研究项目(DARPA)和其他军事组织继续透露他们与机器人的工作;士兵将收到自己的升级(冰冻的装载酒吧可能会变得尤其恼人的中间战)。虽然汤姆巡航今年夏天在他的外骨骼中挥动了外星人明天之边缘(the title perhaps alluding to the delivery date of the technology as much as the premise of eternal recurrence), and as Tony Stark suits up again for the next chapter in Marvel’s billion-dollar movie franchise, the U.S. military is not leaving its own soldiers of innovation behind on the now half-century-old dream-battlefield dotted by robotically augmented human warriors.
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