Gizmodo: Cyberdyne

HAL Robot Exoskeletons Available for Rent

Elaine Chow — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:10:15 EDT

The day for you to strap yourself into a robotic exoskeleton and fight crime the way your normally flabby limbs would never have let you has come! Cyberdyne, the Japanese company responsible for the HAL (hybrid assistive limb) prototype robot suit, is starting rentals this week. The price for being superhuman: about $2,200.

The 22 pound battery-operated system is belted to your waist and captures brain signals through sensors attached to your skin. HAL supposedly works effortlessly with your muscles, increasing your strength up to 10 times the norm without turning you all jolty and robot-like. Think Iron Man instead of Robocop. If the price is a little too much for you, you can rent a cheaper option= one leg for $1,460.

But really, can you put a price on looking this good? [Daily Mail]

Rent Your Own HAL Exoskeleton For The Low, Low Price of $1000!

Sean Fallon — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:30:00 EDT

Are you a feeble, pasty pansy? For the low price of $1000 a month, you could overcome your physical limitations with a HAL exoskeleton from Cyberdyne. While HAL prototypes have been around for a few years now, Cyberdyne has just begun building a lab that will mass produce 400-500 of the suits per year starting this October.

Using sensors attached to the skin, the suit supposedly moves effortlessly with your muscles and it has the capability of increasing your strength up to 10 times the norm. It also has a continuous operating time of about 2 hours and 40 minutes. As mentioned, the monthly rental fee has been set at $1000 which includes $300 for maintenance and upgrades. No word on whether or not they plan on selling these things outright, but I would be perfectly happy renting one and going all Hulk on my enemies for a month or so. [Cyberdyne via LovingtheMachine vie BotJunkie via Boing Boing Gadgets]

DARPA Building Neuromorphic Brain on a Chip (Paging Sarah Connor)

matt buchanan — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:30:12 EST

DARPA's brain-on-a-chip project (cleverly titled SyNAPSE, or Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) sounds straight out of Cyberdyne's portfolio: They want to "develop a brain inspired electronic 'chip' that mimics that function, size, and power consumption of a biological cortex." That whole neuromorphic adaptive business sounds a whole lot like the T-800's neural net processor, don't it? Here's the scary manifesto that puts us on the path to Judgment Day.

As compared to biological systems, today's intelligent machines are less efficient by a factor of one million to one billion in real world, complex environments. The key to achieving the vision of the SyNAPSE program will be an unprecedented multidisciplinary approach that coordinates aggressive technology development in the following technical areas: 1) Hardware; 2) Architecture; 3) Simulation; and 4) Environment. Hardware includes neuromorphic electronics with novel, high density, plastic, synaptic components; Architecture includes neuromorphic design from microcircuits to complete system; Simulation includes large-scale digital simulation of neuromorphic circuits and functional neuromorphic systems; and Environment includes virtual training, testing and benchmarking for neuromorphic systems.

We can only delay it, not stop it. [Danger Room]