Robotic suit gives shipyard workers super strength

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 05, 2014, 1:31 PM UTC

hudibras wrote: post #19

lchengify wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was shocked to hear this so I did some research. As it turns out, it has a lot to do with foreign subsidies, similar to solar power. Apparently up until 1981, the US had the Construction differential subsidy program [1][2] that subsided shipbuilding construction. During the Regan administration, the US eliminated subsidies whereas countries in Asia did not. Now the top 10 shipbuilding countries are in China, Korea,…

You're completely right. The U.S. is so far ahead of the rest of the world in almost all defense technologies that it's a hard pill to swallow politically that there could be one relatively-small segment (non-nuclear surface warships) that we'd be better off actually buying from our closest allies. We export so much defense equipment to our allies, that you'd think it would be okay to maybe possibly import one thing…

Post by hyborg787 » Tue, Aug 05, 2014, 1:57 PM UTC

lchengify wrote: post #15

gk1 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial shipbuilding in the US has long sailed. The industry leaders are now Japan, South Korea, and China. Nobody in the US is even trying to keep up, because there's no way to compete with the cheap labor force and efficient yards of those countries. For the most part, the only ships still being built in the US are for the military.

I was shocked to hear this so I did some research. As it turns out, it has a lot to do with foreign subsidies, similar to solar power. Apparently up until 1981, the US had the Construction differential subsidy program [1][2] that subsided shipbuilding construction. During the Regan administration, the US eliminated subsidies whereas countries in Asia did not. Now the top 10 shipbuilding countries are in China, Korea,…

Post by michaelt » Tue, Aug 05, 2014, 2:11 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #28

humbledrone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems feasible to design an exoskeleton suit that is mechanically incapable of breaking your bones. You could pick some flexibility constraints that define a conservative model of how human limbs can bend and swivel, and then design the hardware with physical interlocks that prevent it from moving beyond those limits. Picture an elbow joint that has a metal flange situated such that if the motor tried to extend th…

A 100kg limit is feasible, that's not yet heavy enough (I think?) to cause major damage if a mishap happens. ATM workers are handling loads like that - and heavier - with cranes and clever tools that make the pieces they handle effectively weightless (check car assembly workers for example), those also don't carry that much risk when handled right. Laws and regulations for these will be just as stringent as other ind…

Post by dbg31415 » Tue, Aug 05, 2014, 2:11 PM UTC

Post by gadders » Tue, Aug 05, 2014, 3:46 PM UTC

goldfeld wrote: post #37

gadders wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So any child above 5 years of age needs two parents to carry them?

Carrying your own offspring is not the same as being employed to carry weight all day (and not necessarily because you really like that profession.) The regulation is in place to protect the worker, be it from the employer or those who don't know any better from themselves.