Soldiers: Your underwear of the future will do more than prevent crotch rot. It’ll protect you from injuries, monitor your vitals, and even “harvest” your energy. That is, if a new project from Darpa’s Defense Sciences Office works out as planned. That’s an illustration, to the right, of what Darpa thinks its “Warrior Web” onesie might look like.
So far, the project is still in the draw-a-cartoon-with-a-six-pack-in-tights stage — a long way off from the “adaptive, compliant, nearly transparent, quasi-active joint support suit,” which can “mitigate musculoskeletal injury caused by discrete dynamic events while maintaining soldier performance,” dreamed up by Darpa. An introductory meeting of potential researchers is set for mid-October.
Musculoskeletal injuries (a blanket term for anything from pain caused by overuse to stress fractures and joint derangements) are a real problem in the military. According to a 2010 study, there were 743,547 injury-related musculoskeletal conditions amongst military personnel in 2006. In 2004, 44 percent of military fatalities resulted from unintentional injuries. These Achilles tendon strains, torn meniscuses, and sore labrums slow our soldiers down, rendering them less effective and placing them in more danger.
But protecting their knees is just the start of what Warrior Web aims to do. Darpa says it’s looking for experts in the following fields for the Warrior Web:
• Joint support and musculoskeletal injury mitigation
• Dynamics of soldier action and external load
• Biomechanical and joint modeling and testing
• Efficient and compliant actuation
• Energy regeneration and harvesting
• Dynamic structural stiffness tuning
• Adaptive sensing and control for biomechatronics
• Materials, fabrics, and structures to enhance the human-to-equipment interface
Wait — “musculoskeletal injury mitigation”? “Energy regeneration”? Is this glorified pair of long underwear supposed to reduce inflammation and heal stress fractures while it pumps B-12 (or maybe amphetamines) into the blood stream? Sounds, uh, ambitious. And if I were a soldier, I’d be wary of modeling any garment that is going to “harvest” anything from me.
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Comments in italics
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Soldiers: Your underwear of the future will do more than prevent crotch rot. It’ll protect you from injuries, monitor your vitals, and even “harvest” your energy. That is, if a new project from Darpa’s Defense Sciences Office works out as planned. That’s an illustration, to the right, of what Darpa thinks its “Warrior Web” onesie might look like.
Germany’s Merkel shrugs aside new book about communist-era past, says she never hid anything
‘Lack of public debate on immigration caused Stockholm riots’
Stockholm riots spread west on sixth night
Marc Abramsson from the National Democratic Party comment on the Husby Riots in Stockholm
‘They don’t want to integrate’: Fifth night of youth rioting rocks Stockholm