IZation Labs

Have you ever seen the old(er) film 'Short Circuit'? It's an old 80's movie about a military robotic prototype that is struck by lightning, gains intelligence, etc. It's not the plot that I'm curious about, but rather the tech involved in controlling the ACTUAL robots they made for the movie. If you don't know anything about it, I would suggest a quick google search for "Johnny 5" or "Short Circuit", that should bring you up to speed pretty quickly.

To control the robots, the man who did the voice of the robot dubbed 'Number 5' wore something called a telemetry suit. The suit had some kind of sensors built in (I assume mainly rotation sensors) that would track the movement of the man's limbs and possibly even head and waist. That data was then sent to the robot, and the robot would move to MATCH the movement of the voice actor/puppeteer in the telemetry suit. In the end this made the interactions and motions of the robot seem more lifelike.

If you wanted to built the same kind of suit, how would you go about it? 

Now, think about Iron Man, or better yet, google "Sarcos Exoskeleton" and watch one of the videos of the this futuristic REAL piece of technology in action. The Sarcos Exoskeleton is the closest thing to an Iron Man suit that we've yet to build, in terms of sheer strength and usability. As always, the power source is the real issue. How do you think the sensors in that suit work? It IS being worn after all, so rotational sensors wouldn't seem to do the trick. You would try to rotate your arm, but the motor controlling the suit you are wearing would constrain that movement. The motor isn't getting a signal to move yet! You don't want the mechanical arm to mimic your own 'personal' movement, you want it to move WITH you.

So then, how DO they do it? What do you think? Did you watch the video, see all of the sensors involved? How do you think they work? How would you do it as simply as possible? 

Let's get some responses on here and then I'll throw out my own opinion, as well as the actually brainstorming question that this topic is all about.

-Lace