It's called 'Gundam' because a developer who loves Gundam (probably XD) named it so.
Image from Sankei Japan
I remembered a friend of mine said how disappointed he was at the fact, as he was hoping for Japan to unveil an 18-meter tall robot with V-fin to justify the code name given. But reality is reality. Don't forget, no matter how fancy the names can be, or how advance the technology is, they are still equipments and machines for war, so my stand is to separate our interest from what we believe in life. It's alright if you enjoy fighting scenes in anime, but in reality, war sucks.
"Exoskeleton Strength: To help carry a backpack with 70 pounds of gear, the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton uses more than 40 sensors and hydraulic mechanisms to distribute the load." - image and description from The New York Times
Unfortunately, we are now one step closer to seeing a real mobile suit in war with the success of Sarcos' exoskeleton set for soldiers. The company will produce this equipment for the US military next year. I call it a mobile suit since the soldier wear it like a suit, and it responses agilely to the movement of the soldiers. This is to improve the overall efficiency of the soldiers, as they can perform their tasks easier with the extra strengths provided by the suit. I think this will be great for civilian work, for example at construction sites as so on. The company should seriously design the suit to cater for those who have physical disabilities too. But these exoskeleton set will always be supplied for war as mentioned above. So I guess sooner or later, we are going to see cyborgs on battle field.
Who knows, one day, they don't need soldiers to operate these suits anymore, and we'll be heading into the era of the Terminators.
Video clip from LiveLeak.com. If you can't see anything, follow this link to LiveLeak.com.
