The US Army is looking for both powered and unpowered exoskeleton technologies that can help soldiers better perform combat-related tasks, as well as more repetitive logistic ones, according to a 11 March request for information notice.
“Exoskeletons are viewed by the army as a promising approach to enable soldiers to maintain peak performance when designed to improve strength, endurance, and ergonomics while maintaining user safety and reducing physical injury risk during various occupational tasks, loads, or repetitive motion,” the army wrote.
By procuring these wearable enhancements the service wants to “augment” soldiers' “strength and productivity” and reduce their risk of injury while conducting lightweight and medium-lift activities, and potentially reduce the number of soldiers required to conduct “heavy-lift” ones such as loading a pallet.
“Technologies may enable multiperson load handling tasks to be safely performed by a single warfighter,” the service wrote.
The army lists a number of “tasks of interest” that it expectsan exoskeleton to help with this time around, including: tactical movement while carrying a load between 99 and 136 lb; bounding rushes while wearing a fighting load between 75 and 90 lb; digging or filling sandbags; a casualty drag of 270 lb up to 45 ft (14 m), conducting an up-armoured door breach and close-quarter battle manoeuvres; parachuting into a location, and more.
“Information is requested to evaluate the state of the technology readiness and state of the market,” the service wrote. “In addition to the … desired features, exoskeleton systems must have demonstrated the principles of user safety, comfort, ease of use, integration with user clothing, and individual mission equipment [and] energy efficiency.”
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