Iron Man is less like fiction every day.
An image–
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2494/24945801.jpg
The article–
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624945.800
Improved versions are already being designed.
Welcome to the 21st century.
That is very cool! The article mentions there are also HAL 4 and HAL 5 prototypes. Only 8,995 more to go before anyone should get really worried.
I would assume the name choice was deliberate, but I wonder why?
(bolding mine)
WAAAAH!!! What are they thinking???
“Why are you lifting that, Dave?”
“I can’t allow you to stop running, Dave.”
No, this is not good. Not good at all…
“HAL, I’m done cleaning the gutters and I want to climb back down this 40-foot ladder.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave…”
Gotta get me one of those. I could see the suit finding industrial applications as well. It might be cheaper to have a guy or two in strong suits for all-purpose heavy lifting rather than get a front end loader, a fork lift, block and tackle sets, etc…
The military applications could be interesting too. Not just for creating “Battle-armored” troops but for things like loading torpedoes on a submarine or hoisting the engine out of a tank without setting up a crane.
Funny enough, I just read 2001:… I think there might be a reason to the naming.
Asimov has a section in the beginning that I thought was pretty cool. It draws a line of scientific breakthroughs that connects mankind to godhood. He puts it much more eloquently than I, but it follows like this: First you got man, then medicine comes along and helps amputees with prosthetics and sick people with new parts (artificial heart, etc.), that leads into better prosthetics and exoskeletons and better artificial organs (eyes, liver, lungs, etc) which eventually will come to replace all organs, leaving just the brain (cyborg) and even that will become replaceable (artificial intelligence - downloading your memories and personality into a processor) which essentially means immortality with the next logical progression being the reduction of the physical body and the freeing of the mind into ethereal existence sorta like our minds will come to manipulate and live within energy or electrons and we will be free of all physical limits. Ergo, we become Gods.
So the naming could be recognizing what Asimov wrote.
I have to admit that I plan on living to a ripe old age, and if they get this type of technology down-pat within 50 years, I’d definitely want to go cyborg and live a bit longer. Isn’t it Sony that has recently registered a patent to create technology that will allow the brain to directly control a video game or something? How far off are MAtrix type I/O functions?
-Tcat
Clarke, right, not Asimov?
The first person to show up at a DopeFest with one of these, wins!
That is correct Dave.
Q: Wins what?
A: Anything he or she wants!
No no no. The first HAL-borne Doper wins anything he or she can lift. I’ll leave to the mods the question of whether or not that includes other Dopers. 
Of course… :smack: I just started reading a Foundation book…I’m going old school Sci-Fi for awhile.
But that was stooopid.
-Tcat
That’s OK, it was a simple mistake. It’s not as if we’re going to remove your memory modules or anything.
All right guys, let’s go unto this pod to talk about the problem we’re having with Tomcat. I just hope he can’t read lips.
Meh. Tell me when they can build one that shoots 20 ft streams of fire from its arms and 9 inch nails from its shoulders.