#Battletech mechs series

However, the towering mechs striding through futuristic cities will remain the stuff of blockbusters. One day, we may have human-piloted exoskeletons for moving cargo and, possibly, heavy construction. The new Assist Suit will be able to lift objects that a person could not otherwise lift by themselves. The next stage of the Assist Suit will be reducing weight and production costs, before looking at developing a model for heavier work. And the taller you make something the harder it becomes to balance. People walk by tipping forward and catching themselves with a foot. However, the act of walking is a pretty unstable process. A gyroscope stabiliser already allows machines, such as cruise ships, to balance themselves. Weighing 188 tonnes, it operated well during the initial testing on reinforced concrete, but sank into the ground during its first field test.Īnother issue would be making the mech walk. This is a similar problem to one that the Germans encountered when developing the ultra-heavy Maus tank during World War Two. “When you take a woman and put all her weight on a quarter of an inch on the back of stiletto shoe, it will punch through a great deal of material,” says Weisman. That creates the “stiletto effect”, where all the weight is concentrated in a very small area. When you have a bipedal system, like you would on a mech, much of its mass is concentrated in the two legs. The pressure exerted on a surface is force divided by the affected area. Naturally, the bigger you build something, the heavier it becomes. “More feasible than a fully autonomous system, because fully-autonomous systems have lots of problems in terms of sensing and contextual decision-making.” “This is a very feasible type of technology,” says Sethu. In fact, having a human-piloted bipedal mech is more likely than one that thinks for itself. “There will be high-level intentions coming from the operator, but a lot of the low-level control will be built into the platform, such as maintaining stability when walking,” says Sethu. “Just look at a soldier who is able to carry several times his own body weight over any terrain.” However, the trade-off is that walking on two legs requires significant dexterity, and stability can be quite hard to control.Īlso, how do you control something at least 10-feet tall? Professor Sethu Vijayakumar of the Edinburgh Centre of Robotics suggests a combination of tele-operations, like those used on the “powerloader” in the film Aliens, with automatic systems reacting to the pilot’s intentions. “The human anatomy is incredibly efficient for clambering over rocks and walking along roads,” explains Rob Buckingham, the director of Race (Remote Applications in Challenging Environments) at the Culham Science Centre. One of the reasons why the human form is so appealing as a vehicle is that it is a remarkably ergonomic design. “Fast forward 30 years, and that same material is now being used in the development of prosthetic limbs.” “These electrical bundles, which would expand or contract, based upon the electricity being provided to them, were the muscles of our mechs,” says Weisman. The artificial muscles he imagined are a lot like electroactive polymers. The basic idea behind Jordan’s mechs is reasonably sound. Jordan envisioned mechs built from a steel frame surrounded by electrically charged artificial muscles that would move the joints, together with a gyroscope stabiliser and on-board power plant. Unlike previous examples of mechs, he took a relatively grounded approach when first conceiving his “BattleMechs”. Jordan Weisman of Harebrained Schemes first created the mech-themed BattleTech games in the 1980s. Hollywood films like Aliens, Avatar and Pacific Rim have imagined them as well.īut, how viable are these designs? Could we ever see human beings piloting a walking robot?

#Battletech mechs series

Human-piloted robots first appeared in Japanese anime, but soon migrated to the UK through the likes of the TV series Robotech.

These titanic behemoths – otherwise known as mechs - have become a kind of shorthand for the future of war. For decades, there has been a common thread in what we think the battlegrounds of the future will look like giant, man-carrying robot suits.