It has got two spindly black legs attached to a backpack with long rectangular batteries on the shoulder blades and an armored computer in the small of its back. Amusingly, it has radiator fins instead of buttocks. The whole machine looks sort of like a human skeleton, because the legs and hips have joints that mimic the movement of human limbs.

In fact, when you strap your legs into its legs, you can walk, run, kneel, squat, dance, or whatever—the exoskeleton has a range of motion equal to that of a human being. You move, and it moves with you. But once on, it allows a regular geek to haul a 200-lb. backpack as if it weighed as much as a couple of physics textbooks.

Now we're talking.

Let me explain how I got here. In late 2007, a production company called me and asked if I'd like to host The Works, a show for the History Channel. My job, they said, would be to "explain, uh, how things work." During my cable TV stint, I raced lawn mowers in Florida, was shot at with a rifle while inside an armored car in Texas, and—best of all—I piloted an honest-to-God lower-body exoskeleton with the researchers at Berkeley Bionics in California.

And so, on an otherwise perfectly normal summer day, I dropped by a nondescript brick building where a group of former graduate students from the University of California at Berkeley were busy making last-minute tweaks to a dead-black titanium exoskeleton, and they invite me to try it on.

My first impression: The straps are too big. The HULC was built with military money and it is designed to fit army guys. And soldiers have big thighs, apparently. I yank the Velcro straps as tight as possible, then strap my shoes into its open-toed boots. I shrug on the backpack and clasp the chest strap. I am now wearing an exoskeleton. Turned off, the device is heavy; it's like wearing a scuba tank on dry land. But once the researchers switch it on, HULC stands up on its own—with me inside.

At this point, I'm still hanging from the ceiling, so I can't fall down. I can't feel any extra weight because the exoskeleton frame supports itself (about 30 lbs), as well as any attached backpacks. We turn on the treadmill and I cautiously bend my knee. Nothing happens. A half-second later, force sensors detect my leg pushing against the exoskeleton and the machine jerkily bends its knee. The delay is disconcerting; I can barely walk.

A couple minutes later, the treadmill is rolling and I'm humping along like Forrest Gump in his special shoes. Like a video game that breaks the human face down into just a few polygons, my new exo-walk consists of just a few gross movements. Knee lift, foot out, foot down. Repeat. It lacks the fluidity of my normal walk, but I don't fall. And oh yeah, every movement is accompanied by the loud whine of electric motors. Each step sounds like reeee (that's the motor) followed by ker-thump, as my foot touches down.

Reeee-ker-thump. Reeee-ker-thump. "Drop the gun," I say. "You are under arrest." (Yes, that's a Robocop joke, and it is hilariously funny.)

After the practice run, it's time to hit the hallway. I immediately notice that my gait is becoming more fluid. I can even balance on one leg. This is because the machine is learning to anticipate my every move. The HULC is no dumb brute. It is constantly sensing the force of my movements and forming a model of how I walk. It's getting to know me, exoskeleton-style.

The HULC is a finished product, along with a slew of other exoskeletons, such as the full-body Sarcos and the medically oriented Hal-5. But make no mistake, scientists have been trying to build robotically augmented limbs since well before Sigourney Weaver used a power lifter to kick alien butt.

Designs for wearable mechanical skeletons have been evolving since the 1960s, when General Electric foresaw using the Hardiman for heavy loading in factories. Sadly, the original designs were infeasibly power-hungry, requiring heavy batteries that pulverized the payload-to-system weight ratio. Even worse, the old designs didn't degrade gracefully, which is a nice way of saying that when the power failed, they would fall to the ground and rip your limbs off. Ouch.

But today, exoskeletons have become a reality and, according to the researchers, they don't suffer from the limb-ripping drawbacks of yesteryear.

Once my gait cycles a few times, HULC has formed a complete model. A researcher informs me that from this point onward, the exoskeleton can cycle through my walk all by itself. Yes, by itself. This means that I could fall asleep and it would keep walking, dragging my legs through the motions. Suddenly, I imagine a platoon of snoozing soldiers fast marching non-stop through dark jungles at an average speed of 7 mph, a fast jog.

That's creepy. Plus, I'm sweaty and exhausted; it's time to take off the exoskeleton.

A couple yanks on the Velcro straps and I'm out. But my legs feel dead, like I just spent an hour jumping on a trampoline. My helpful researcher lets me know that the goal of the exoskeleton is to minimize metabolic cost. Using your muscles costs oxygen, and the brain is stingy—it uses just enough oxygen to get the job done. Once your brain figures out that it needs less oxygen to move (thanks to the exoskeleton), it sends less oxygen. Without the exoskeleton, my brain isn't giving me enough juice to use my limbs normally, hence the weak legs. Luckily, it only takes a few minutes to go back to normal. Thank you, brain.

Despite the amazingness of it all, I have to say it felt clumsy and weird to lock my limbs into the machine's cold, robotic embrace. You won't catch me walking down any staircases in an exoskeleton. At least, not without a lot more practice.

Daniel H. Wilson is the author of several books, including How to Survive a Robot Uprising, Where's My Jetpack?, and Bro-Jitsu: The Martial Art of Sibling Smackdown. Wilson earned his PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. His first novel, Robopocalypse, is forthcoming from Doubleday.

Video from The Works courtesy of The History Channel

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

The 10-cm long DASH, which stands for Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod, weighs only 16 grams, yet is able to run 15 times its body length per second. It has a uniquely flexible design from nearly all sides that allows it to survive pretty much anything, including a drop eight stories above the ground. It's actually made of what's basically laminated cardboard, which means it's a very cheap robot to build as well. Check out the video—this thing is crazy. [Thanks, Aaron!]

The first part of the video would seem to show that initial reports of the experiment's success were overblown—the bug is pretty much just switched on and off, tethered to a string like so many unlucky June bugs. The experiments do get quite a bit more advanced, with enough fairly fine directional control to show that flying one of these beetles around like an R/C plane isn't out of the questions.

In these videos the beetle is never fully untethered, and I imagine such a demonstration would look a bit less like an "enhanced experimentation technique" and more like a small-scale air-disaster. The most important question won't be relevant to our generation(s), but the next: CYBORG DEATH BEETLES? The new HotWheels? [Technology Review—Thanks, Robert]

The first part of that, the true part, represents a huge step in the mechanical control of living things. It's far from the first foray into insect mind control, but by far the most precise—this specimen, commanded by six radio-actuated electrodes on the beetle's muscles and brain, could be piloted around the room like a tiny RC plane.

The hardware isn't much of a burden for the beetle, which is capable of taking flight with more than twice the 1.3g mass of the apparatus on board. The remaining payload will probably be filled with camera gear, as this project is funded by DARPA (natch) for surveillance purposes.

Unfortunately there's no video of the demo yet, but we have been furnished with this unintentionally funny picture of the event, which may or may not contain the bug in question. Can you spot it? [Tech-on]

The Price: $289

The Verdict: Probably the best lamp we've ever used. The light is a bright white, which is both inviting and soothing. The upper "room light" is bright enough to illuminate an average living room—no small feat for a desk lamp—so it's definitely more than enough for bedrooms and offices. The lower task light is plenty bright enough for any detail work you want to get done, from studying to hacking your PSP. The extra outlet on its base is plenty useful for any other devices you need to plug in, and the base itself is HEAVY. No mere stiff breeze would knock this over; it requires a stiff shove from a man who could do with skipping a meal.

The lamp comes with a 3-year fixture warranty and a 2-year bulb warranty. For $289, it's not a cheap lamp, but it's a quality lamp. If we had unlimited money, all our lamps would be Berkeley Lamps. Science + Lamps = Good. [Berkeley Lamp]

Now, I'm no scientist, but apparently this sort of image gives even the most seasoned electron microscopist a raging science boner. But it is not so much about the graphene as it is about the potential of the TEAM 0.5. One researcher noted that it "allows for the detection of every single atom from the Periodic Table provided that the sample under investigation can stand the radiation damage." Basically, it can study individual atoms in real time and produce high-resolution images of its subject. That will allow researchers to fully realize the potential of graphene by understanding how defects in the crystal structure can effect its properties. And they claim this is only the tip of the iceberg. Noooow I feel a science boner coming on. [Nanowerk and Science Daily]

According to the scientists at UC Berkeley and Lewis and Clark College in Oregon, a 2-cm square of the stuff can hold nearly a pound. Off the bat, that may not be enough to hold me on a gusty day 32 stories up the side of the Empire State Building, but it's a good start. Put a whole suit of the material on a guy as limber as, say, Andy Serkis, and you never know.

Another cool attribute is that—like certain ex-girlfriends—the stuff gets clingier the longer you use it. As it was rubbed against a glass plate, it got stronger, because of the way the fibers bent into shape. I'm not even sure many geckos can get a solid grip on glass. Of course, I don't want Berkeley professor Ron Fearing to hear me talking smack about his beloved lizards. Here's how he rhapsodizes the inspiration for his invention:

"The gecko has a very sophisticated hierarchical structure of compliant toes, microfibers, nanofibers and nanoattachment plates that allows the foot to attach and release with very little effort. The gecko makes it look simple, but the animal needs to control the directions it is moving its toes—correct movement equates to little effort."