Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Pilot Training in a 9,000 Pound Mech Suit”.
My name’s Andy and today I’m learning to Pilot this 9 000 pound mech suit from Exo sapien, [ Applause ]. This is prosthesis from exosapien Technologies. This is not some art project. This is a 9 000 pound mech suit. It can walk, it can scale Hills. It can Crush things and I’m about to attempt to learn how to Pilot it from Iron Man to Pacific Rim, all the way back to aliens for decades, we’ve gotten glimpses from Hollywood at what human-powered exoskeletons could look like, but this isn’t science fiction. Prosthesis is an 18 foot tall 15 foot wide human-driven Mech prosthesis can run climb, lift cars, it can even cross rivers, but it can’t do any of that on its own.
No prosthesis is powered by a Lithium-Ion battery. It takes a specially trained pilot to control its four identical legs and today that pilot is me: exosapien, co-founder Jonathan Tippett spent more than a decade designing and building prosthesis. What inspired you to make this suit. So I wanted to make a machine that sort of captured that age-old pursuit of human skill and Mastery, but combined it with super modern technology in a novel way.
That was not automated and I spent a good four years just doing engineering calculations, dreaming up the design and the architecture, and you know it started out being sort of a guerrilla themed project. And then I realized it was a sport, and then it took on a sports machine. Look you’re connected to the machine through all four of your limbs. Your arms operate these two outside legs, with the red stripes on them, and your legs operate. The two big tubular legs that you see in the closer to the center of the machine – these are the bumper bars. These are the hardest working part of the machine.
That’S what you fall on when you fall over the whole sort of concept of these machines is that the pilot is in control and the question we ask new pilots is what skills do they have that they think might lend themselves to being a good Mac pilot People with good body awareness – just you know, gymnasts snowboarders, Motocross Riders, mountain bikers that that tends to have a correlation having good rhythm like if you’re a good dancer or you play a musical instrument. That seems to help because there’s a there’s, a rhythmic element to the kinematics of the machine, all right. Well, if dancing skills, are an indicator, I’m in some serious trouble, but I think I’m ready to give it a go. So if you’re ready to teach me, let’s do this, absolutely, let’s strap you in all right. Okay, your legs are locked in all right and then your arm, your forearms, go in here and there’s your grips. That’S your piloting position. I feel like a pilot. One thing we’ve done lately is a ride along which is actually kind of fun. This will kind of be like having the training wheels on yeah yeah you’ll, hit cowboy nice and easy okay all right and then slowly down foreign [ Applause, ], [, Laughter, ], yeah. Okay, that’s just like the first time my Dad tried to teach me to drive yeah, I’m gon na get out of the car. Now all right all right.
The mech is yours all right up foreign, that’s great notable improvement from uh push-up, one to push-up five, how you feeling it’s funny on the way down! You can almost let gravity it almost feels like you’re letting gravity do the work. You just give it a really light touch the way up. It seems to kind of fight you a little bit more yeah you’re more in control, which means it’s more demanding on the way up, thinking about operating the controls and not the machine, because the machine is a big complex thing.
All your body can really relate to is the controls, but I think you got front push-ups sufficiently mastered to move on to back push-ups all right. The mech is yours, nice. You got that one on your belt, real, quick I’d, say: that’s if that’s good enough that felt great! Well, let’s get you standing up all right here.
We go good, perfect, yeah. All right! Wow! Welcome to the Mac. Pilots Club feel like a Mech pilot and then just reverse that go nose first, beautiful smooth as silk all at once, all at once all right guys, no laughing! That’S great nice they’re, not fighting each other, but they’re all feel like they’re, going in different directions.
A little bit yeah I just do it do a couple of squats and then you can start playing with it a bit hahaha! That’S great! That’S a that’s a good place to conclude lesson one. You did awesome fantastic straight to standing man. That was awesome. That is a wild feeling.
This is this is insane. This is one of the most fun things. I’Ve ever done right on foreign ly, wondering how long it took me to you know, make the Mac actually walk. Well, we never got there for most trainees.
It takes days before they’re walking in prosthesis, but there was one more thing we wanted to see before calling it a day. You want to watch me flip a car. Let’S do it, even though the point of today was to experience what it’s like to Pilot a giant mech suit. We weren’t going to pass up an opportunity to see prosthesis destroy something, since this was more advanced piloting than my few hours of training would cover Jonathan agreed to show us how it’s done: [, Applause ].
So, what’s next for exosapien and its giant mech suit Jonathan says the Next Generation Mech will make this one look like an antique, smaller and three or four times more powerful. The ultimate goal is to turn mech suit piloting into a professional sport. He plans to bring in pro athletes with different backgrounds and let them face off in Metal on Metal competitions. The picture of American Ninja Warrior meets monster trucks like giant obstacle. Courses puzzles like physical giant. Physical puzzles balance. Beams objects to move out of the way three or four of these things going head to head shoulder to shoulder to get across the course all right.
What a day that was, I can honestly say, I’ve never experienced anything like it. I really want to thank the guys over at exosapien for setting this up. This was so much fun. We can’t wait to do it again, but I want to know what you guys think. Would you guys want to Pilot this? Let me know in the comments below, if you enjoyed this video, don’t forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to CNET for more, like it.
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