The Real Iron Man

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before, but DH works for a company that is into robotics.  He actually started working twenty-something years ago with the University of Utah.  Then that science research department morphed into a private company named Sarcos.   Sarcos did the robotic dinosaurs for Jurassic Park (the ride), and did the fountains at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas (that was actually one of Bruce’s projects).  They’ve done lots of other things as well, of course, including a lot of top secret work for the military.

About three years ago, Sarcos was purchased by Raytheon, and became a satellite company called Raytheon-Sarcos.  As of October first, they were officially absorbed into Raytheon and are now a specialized robotics division of Raytheon.

One of the most notable or attention-grabbing projects has been their “real” Iron Man suit.   It’s actually called an exoskeleton, or XOS for short.  You may have read about it in a newspaper (AP and UPI have visited, so has the movie studio from the Iron Man movie, etc.)   They’ve had write-ups in Scientific American and many other magazines.  And now the project has been named as by Time magazine as one of the best 50 inventions of 2010.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2029497_2030613_2029814,00.html

You can also watch a short (and interesting!) video about it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO0xNI3xpmE

And who says geeks aren’t fun?!?