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Starship Troopers: Exoskeletons and Translators 133

Posted by michael from the sigourney-weaver dept.
naoursla writes: "Remember the DARPA research solicitation for proposals on Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation? Here is a group that is making progress on it. Right now they have a pair of legs powered by a chain saw engine. Science News has an article about the researchers this week." And cmholm writes: "Fleshing out this earlier Slashdot story on wearable translators for the military is an article from AFCEA's June Signal magazine. Using a ViA II PC wearable running ViA's Language Translator software, the system can translate between spoken English and Korean, Thai, Chinese, Arabic, Albanian, Spanish, and other major European languages." So between the two, you can either talk to the aliens, or throw them out the airlock.
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Starship Troopers: Exoskeletons and Translators More

Starship Troopers: Exoskeletons and Translators

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  • No doubt that it is the reason that it won't translate. But it ought to be able to translate it. Any program designed to deal with human language should be able to cope with the small inaccuracies that go along with it. An extra 'l' ought not to be able to throw the program for a loop. You and I understood what was meant, so why can't a computer?

  • re: legs powered by chainsaw's (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    EVERYONE will hear them coming for miles. A soldier's lifeblood is stealth, a great idea not quite ready for primetime.
  • So... how far <i>is</> a click?
  • The frozen ham. Haven't you ever seen those movies where two enemy soldiers become lost or abandoned or marooned and have to rely on each other to get through numerous inexplicable disasters? Ham is food, and should sustain the two soldiers throughout all their wacky hijinx.
  • Translated English -> German -> French -> English

    Start: All your base are belong to us.

    Result: Your whole lower part being to belong us.

  • Right now they have a pair of legs powered by a chain saw engine.

    [...]

    So between the two, you can either talk to the aliens, or throw them out the airlock.

    Kick them out of the airlock, surely!
    --
  • Not Asimov, but the great Heinlein.

    Waldoes were developed by a guy called Waldo to help him, since he had a muscle wasting disease. So the orginal application *was* to assist the disabled. Info here [wegrokit.com]

    Although IANAL, I work in IP, and I am surprised that someone could register Waldo as I would have thought that RAH's estate owned it. Still, weirder things have happened...

  • Enemy Soldier: ...b4k4 [megatokyo.com].

  • Not to mention the munitions that say:

    "I am an explosive. I will go off in 10...9..."

  • > And when things get really ugly, it takes over, walks straight home, and I'm in bed before I even know it.

    Yeah, built-in blood alcohol level sensor.

    And when Mark II comes out, the exo will just leave the frail human at home and go out drinking by itself.


    --
  • You have been watching dark angel, haven't you? if so, credit where it's due. If not, well, you just described what happens to one of the main charecters who is in a wheelchair.
  • Nope, in dark angel, the main charecter is a super soldier, and doesn't need a suit. There are the guys who put a little spider thing in the back of their neck, and feel no pain, and get adrenalized strength, but that's not quite super strength--no tank tossing, in other words.

    What you are thinking of is the male lead, Logan, who has been in a wheelchair most of the season--he now has a pair of exoskeleton legs. All that, AND engaged to Jessica Alba. How can you not want to be that man!
  • Zoidberg: Young lady, I am an expert on humans! Now, open your mouth and say "wubba wubba wubba."

    Fry: Wubba, wubba, wubba

    Zoidberg: What?! My mother was a SAINT! GET OUT!!

  • Hey there dirty hippie. If you want to criticize the military, do it right and check your facts. Air Force, not Marines. As for the history, govt, and politics, you left out religion(s), culture, race relations, etc. Finally, whether the military gets involved is a political issue, and the individual soldiers don't get a say.

    itachi
  • Think of the virus that could introduced to these systems. As mentioned to some of the posts.

    Ballet virus - Watch an entire battalion do swan lake. Or better yet the nutcracker (pun intended - sorry)
    Yoga virus
    Chorus Line Virus - Watch as the line is done by a couple of hundred troops.
    Musical Virus - Name your favorite musical here. Sound of Music or better yet Wizard of OZ. "Off to see the wizard the ...." Assume a minefield ahead.
    Jazzercise Virus
    Paper Clip Help Virus - "what would you like to do?" Move left, fire gun, jump. "let me search on move left, there are several ways to do this, please pick one of the foll...."

    Sorry, could not resist.
  • The blue screen of death takes on a whole new meaning
  • Read Chomky's 'The New Military Humanism', instead. Prolly a lot more relevant stuff in there.... ;)
  • "Back away from that keg, you BITCH!"
  • It looked worse the way the languages were ordered in the original article... perhaps the best way to go would have been to replace "...Spanish, and other..." with just "...and...", but alas, my morning hit of crank hadn't kicked in yet.
  • Guess I have to make a crank call here... You prbably meant the word that could also mean 'structural surface defect' ie. crack?

    "Crank" is American (that is United States of America) slang for d-methamphetamine, or (S)-N,a-Dimethylbenzene-ethanamine, or 1-phenyl-2-methylaminopropane.

  • Will it do Klingon? Those bastards at that last convention seemed to be laughing pretty hard about something or other they said to me in Klingon, and I'm not sure if it was "He has a tall leanness." or something else...I just can't keep up with these professionals.
  • Space Marines have used exo-skeleton armour for millennia to eradicate the enemies of Mankind and burn the heretics!
  • Does the translator fit in my ear and feed the information directly to my brain?
  • Worse yet, would anyone want to really on a translator running on Winblowz?

    You got to be kidding me.

    For christ's sake they got a naval ship stranded in the ocean and you want to wear this when "possible" hand-to-hand combat insues...

    Can anyone spell "AWOL"

  • Well, of course we would like to see this technology used for peaceful purposes. In fact, this has already happened. Rest easy, knowing that Steven Hawking has been on the case for some time now. :-) Hawking [theonion.com]
  • Right now they have a pair of legs powered by a chain saw engine.

    Woah! Bet that's handy when you sneak up to some enemy snipers:

    Soldier: Tuktuktuktuktuktuk... ARGH!
  • They are already running into too many setbacks. They are using Windows XP to run their systems. The test subject lifted his leg and had to call Microsoft [microsoft.com] for a new activation [wsj.com] key...
  • I suspect they'd use a noise-cancelling microphone... they work rather well, and really help with voice recognition software's accuracy.
  • but, IMHO, why don't they take SOME of the money and give the marines a crash course in, say, albanian? When i go on vacation it usually takes me only a few days to be able to communicate on a simple basis with the "civilians". Enough to tell "I'm a suicidal terrorists" from "I give up!". Would it really be harder to learn another language than builiding a milliondollar superduper Translator that frightens the hell out of everyone? Lispy

  • ROFL (Score:1)

    by Lispy ( 136512 )
    Hey, this is abot war. These guys are soldiers. They carry out orders. There is no use in letting them decide between good and bad. But when these translators work at all, maybe it is in fact a good thing after all. When people talk rather than just shoot each other i can always appreciate it. Lispy
  • ... for several of its executions ...

    Which is *also* an amazingly good translation! Cuts the crap, straight to the point: this is about high-tech ways of executing the local rabble.

    "They weren't killed in the War. They were killed in the Peace Process."
    Ken McLeod, The Star Fraction - also a good source for US/UN teletroopers.
  • N.B. there doesn't seem to be a Chinese word for civillian...

    Maybe there's a Chinese word for civilian (sp.)?

  • Shouldn't system developers prioritise languages from potential future war (or "peace-keeping") zones? Plenty of locals speak Albanian in Kosovo and Macedonia, as well as Albania proper...

  • On a positive note, clearly of interest would be a Beowulf cluster of exoskeletons, which could be used for formation dancing and even synchronised swimming and minefield clearance.

    I think the beowulf cluster of exoskeletons would end up pouring hot grits down their pants, chanting something about Natalie Portman...



    Product warranty will be void if any labels or top cover is removed.
  • I am so glad that not much progress has been made on this. My heart fell when I realized the Ideas that have been swimming in my head for years may not only be concurrently discovered but actually patented by people working on this program. Relief that these projects seem not much more competent than the similar atempts in the sixties. And what a great ego boost for me to realize my ideas are not painfully obvious to researchers in the field.

    I always knew reading comic books would get me somewhere.

    Who wants to bet it's Cheney and his bad heart that is now the #1 spporter of this program. Go Tony Stark!!!

  • LOL... simple! Who's gonna decide which one is the correct spelling???

    ____
  • A kilometer (or kilobetre, depending on where you're from).

    ____
  • English and Korean, Thai, Chinese, Arabic, Albanian, Spanish, and other major European languages.

    That's interesting. I didn't realize Korean, Thai, Chinese and Arabic were European languages. Or that Albanian was a major European language. :-))
  • "Don't run. We are your friends"

    POW! POW!

    -----
  • So-called "military technology" will have peaceful applications, just as many things that start out on the "peaceful" side of the fence are adopted for military purposes.

    Supposedly, Archimedes of Syracuse designed machines to ward off Roman invaders based on levers and pulleys, some of the most basic machines that exist. It isn't so much that these are "military technology", but that they are technology that can be put to, among other things, military uses.

    Similarly, any implement you can grab, from a phone receiver to a frozen ham, can be used as a lethal weapon.

    So even if its initial purpose is military, the results of such research are likely to be useful for far more. "Seek and destroy" becomes "search and rescue", and those heavy bombers become your commercial airliners. Same tech, different app.

  • Okay, now that I'm properly awake, here are some examples of "military technology" that have been put to "peaceful purposes":

    Encryption. One of the earlier known forms of encryption, the so-called Caesar cipher, was used to transfer information to generals in the field. Encryption has been studied, and used, by the military ever since. However, at the same time, you can use SSL or SSH or whatever to securely send your CC numbers or email.

    Computers. The first examples of modern computers (electronic, not Babbage's) were a result of military research. Bletchley Park developed what is arguably the first modern computer to break encryption, and ENIAC was built to compute ballistics tables for artillery. Yet, your post to Slashdot uses computer technology peacefully.

    The Space Program. The V1 and V2 rockets designed by the Nazis to hurl high explosives at London were a terror weapon during WWII. However, the same technology that enabled that (as well as the ICBM's to follow) also created the space program, which has even been used recently for tourism (which is a peaceful enterprise).

    GPS. Among other things that have been boosted into orbit, the GPS constellation was initially a military venture. Nowadays, you can get a GPS receiver for your Palm.

    The Internet. Or shall I say ARPA Net? The protocols behind the Internet were developed by and for DARPA. It just turns out that the rest of the world had something else to use them for.

    At the risk of running late for work, I'll stop here. But in closing: technology research is something you should be applauding, regardless. Technology does not exist in a vacuum; you cannot develop it for one application (say, military) without finding benefits elsewhere (say, civilian).

  • The army is using nanotechnology [vny.com] to make a new generation of combat uniforms. This isn't quite the same thing as what the article is talking about, but it is fairly similar (and interesting).
  • This is already being done. Before I was shipped to the Gulf War, I was taught some basic arabic as well as the customs of the area and the laws of the land.

    I was also taught the customs of the peoples of Argentina and Paraguay when my unit was sent to those places to support the Peace Corp when they needed help accessing the remote parts of the jungle to provide medical support. Apparently there's bad people in these countries that don't want the sick to get help and the dreaded US Army decided to help.

    The translators are just the next step in the evolution of technology that the military uses. I think it's a great idea if we don't see some of the translations that people are showing from babelfish on this forum.
  • I have no idea why I'm responding to an anonymous coward but in the instance you quoted, the Peace Corp needed help getting into the jungle without getting attacked by gangs that want to control the local population (Yes, there are bad people out there that want to harm innocent people. I'm sure that concept is foreign to you while sitting safely behind your computer). The governments of these countries invited us to help the Peace Corp help their citizens. Which we did by providing security and medical attention to the locals.

    You should probably understand what you're attempting to bash before you do it. The US Military isn't the evil entity that everyone pretends it to be. It's just extremely powerful and that scares people. But you have to remember that the military is made up of people like you and me. Well, maybe not like you but average citizens who care about the safety of their country and its citizens.

    As far as the Marine rapes, there are people that will do the wrong thing no matter what you try to teach them. It's horrible and our leaders need to do something about it quickly.
  • Great! Now the first time we see storm troopers in real life, they'll be under Kofi Anan's control, not Darth Vaders! The UN's official color is white, right? :)
  • but five seconds is a little unsettling for translation.

    Yeah I can see future news stories, 'A new species of aliens have been wiped out because their greeting, which is pronounced "Schlalaxk", translates roughly to:
    "Hello, please acknowledge my greeting within four seconds or my sense of shame will force me to kill you."'


    Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
  • Why not take the exoskeleton idea all the way to come up with remote soldiers, a la "Forever Peace" by Joe Haldeman? Sure, each unit would cost more initially, but if a unit "died", you would not have to train up a whole new soldier. Each unit would be practically invulnerable and completely fearless.

    And BTW, this is another Heinlein idea, although he never saw it being used by the military.

  • More likely than not, the Marines entrusted to use said technology would be trained to use a few scripted sentences until lethal force has been determined to be unnecessary.

    By the way:
    If it's a US Marine and he's decided to shoot you, running only ensures that you die tired. :)

    Semper Fi.
  • I've always wanted to be a borg!
  • hah! That was better than my previous comment:)
  • Mechanical legs powered by a chain-saw engine?

    The real purpose of Junkyard Wars/Scrapheap Challenge becomes clear....next generation military hardware from a big pile of crap!

    "Allright ladies, you wanna-be Marines have to build me a device that will protect your sorry asses using only things you find in the junkyard..."
  • Since it's a US project, I'd bet they are working on translations for missions that the US Military sees coming in the next few decades. Korea, China, Middle East.

    As for African languages, if I remeber correctly, *most* African nations will also have large percentages of thier populations that speak French, English or in some cases Portuguese - from the european colonies. North African nations will have Arabic as thier main language.

    A quick look at the CIA World Fact Book backs this up. - Random clicks of African nations.

    Angola - Portuguese (official), Bantu and other African languages

    Benin - French (official), Fon and Yoruba (most common vernaculars in south), tribal languages (at least six major ones in north)

    Ethiopia - Amharic, Tigrinya, Orominga, Guaraginga, Somali, Arabic, other local languages, English

    Libya - Arabic, Italian, English

    Rwanda - Kinyarwanda (official) universal Bantu vernacular, French (official), English (official), Kiswahili (Swahili)

    There's a random sample of African nations from CIA World Fact Book. I got central Africa, western coast, North Africa and East Africa...so it's a pretty good regional sample.

  • They have been in the past.

    Angola was the center of a nasty civil war that not only involved South Africa, but an entire Cuban Army Regiment for years. US and Soviet "Advisors" were also there for the festivities.

    Parts of Timor, the island in Indonesia where the UN went into last year, speak Portuguese.

    The South China Sea and Africa will continue to be hot spots of international importance....and they speak Portuguese there.
  • Tanks are powered by gas turbines or large diesel motors...not much stealth there.

    Stealth has it's place when you are scouting or under armored. When you are assaulting stealth takes a back seat.

    I'd suspect that exoskeletons powered with chainsaw motors aren't going to be used for stealthy recon.

    That said, when these things (if ever) go into service, there will be a fuel cell or quiet ceramic motor to power them.
  • ...but this guy [berkeley.edu] sure ain't no Ripley [mecha.com].
  • "...exoskeleton research is being funded by DARPA..."

    Does that mean that script kiddies will be trying to hack into them over the internet?

  • I read a lot of Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein all around the same time so I'm sure I'm remembering wrong, but it does seem as though 30 or 40 years of common use of "Waldo" or "Waldoes" to refer to these things would amount to the copyright or trademark equivalent of "prior art".
  • Sarge: "What in God's name are you men DOING!?!?"
    Platoon: "We're yanking on our pull cords, SIR!"
    Sarge: "I see that. Stop that sick shit, or you'll be scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush!!"
    Platoon: "We're just trying to start our pants, SIR!"
    ...And so on.

    --
  • Let alone a heavily armed Marine in an exoskeleton...
  • Check out the three and four "legged" robot section:

    Biomemetic Walking Machines [berkeley.edu]

    The three legged robot uses simple solenoids to achieve directional and rotational control (talk about a cheap actuator), while the four legged "bug" uses a simple mechanical system and open loop design (ie, you could build one of these devices from Lego with zero sensors, and it would work) - makes me want to break out the Mindstorms set...

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • And if not, how can the software/hardware be modified to make it applicable to amputees and/or paralyzed people?
  • The pair of legs powered by a chainsaw engine is more of a walking wheelbarrow [berkeley.edu] than an exoskeleton. More pics here [berkeley.edu].

    --
  • Right now they have a pair of legs powered by a chain saw engine.

    Is that it? They should have spoken to Stephen Hawking first, his exoskeleton [theonion.com] is fully functional.

    ----------------------------
  • I'm too busy to read....

    ----------------------------
  • one word: beowulf cluster

    That's two words.

  • Yup, as Heatseeker151 pointed out, I can't spell properly. I've checked it though - substitute the word "civillian" in the result for "common people". Apologies for my mistake.
  • and other _major_ European languages. WTF? Albanian is spoken by like a million people. It's one of, if not, the poorest country in Europe. Sorry but that doesn't count as major. IMNSHO the major ones are English, German, French, and Spanish in no particular order. Also, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Thai does not count as European languages.
  • I was surprised that they actually translate the speech to text, then run it through a translator, and then translate text back to audio. While that's certainly the best approach for getting something out the door quickly, it seems it would be better to take the three technologies and merge them into something that performs the translation from the original speech without turning it into text first.

    I can't possibly imagine that direct translation would be a better solution. What is audio for a computer? It is a sequence of samples, there are no easily visible patterns inside it. The audio signal needs to be simplified into a sequence of phonemes, which can then be analyzed by the translation/parsing unit. And text happens to be a relatively reasonable representation of phonemes (phonetic writing is also a kind of text, you know). Of course, using actual idiosyncratic, but "correct" spelling is incredibly stupid, but some kind of text makes very much sense to me.

  • Portuguese is more widely spoken in the world than German... Tchau Amigo Fernando

  • The Science News article credits Heinlein with exoskeletons, in Starship Troopers. I was surprised they didn't mention Waldos [uts.edu.au], essentially a networked version of the same thing, which he is better known for.

  • Am I the only one who thought of Junkyard Wars after reading about a contraption powered by a chainsaw engine? This sounds like a good challenge for the next season...
  • Well, Korean is considered one of the Turk languages (Altaic?), and Turkey is *sort* of considered part of Europe. Thai is also considered to have been under Indian influence, and considering the number of Indian people involved in technology around the world, I'm surprised that at least Hindi isn't on the list. Also, I see no African languages in that list, where people are most likely to need translation for peace keeping missions.
  • The Techno-Trousers were 'Ex-NASA' - so there's prior art but it doesn't belong to Wallace.

    The porridge cannon on the other hand...
  • Only in a humane *society*.

    In many societies throughout history, the chosen response to a wounded soldier would be the exoskeleton telling other soldiers "this unit is wounded, leave it!" or perhaps giving the wearer a lethal injection as soon as he becomes incapacitated. Not solely for mercy, probably just to keep him from being captured.

    -Kasreyn
  • Why does Michael seem to think a clunky translator built by humans could ever understand an alien?!

    * we don't have ANY alien vocabulary to build on
    * Unlike with humans, we can't base understanding on some basic thing that aliens are certain to understand the same way we do. SETI are off their rockers. It's true that their mathematical symbols are the best chance, but when they were showed to a roomful of scientists with specialties in that area, not one of the poor bastards could read it.
    * Finally, alien languages will not only have different sounds (if they're even verbal - consider aliens that communicate by scent, telepathically, or by gesture), but they are also likely to have a completely different grammar, with verb tenses and complexities completely new to us.

    To sum up, no earthling translator built now has a hope in hell of figuring out what an alien is saying. I think Michael was just being weirdo. However, it might be possible, AFTER we meet some aliens, to design a translator. If, that is, our initial inability to communicate does not put us immediately at war.

    -Kasreyn
  • Yes, true, but they are a million heavily-armed people who make the NRA look like the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. And if our troops are in their country then their language counts as major.
    And how many Arabic and Chinese-speaking immigrants are there in Europe? Certainly millions...
  • I note that this translator technology is being tested for military use, and that the exoskeleton research is being funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). While I'm sure that all of these technologies will have civilian applications, I can't help but wonder how much better off we would be if we took the money we use for researching military technology and devoted it to peaceful purposes. Maybe I'm a little bit of an idealist, but it saddens to me to think of how many of the best and brightest minds in science and engineering are devoted to studying better ways for us to kill one another. There must be a more fruitful way to make use of all that knowledge, dedication, and intellectual prowess.

    --
  • Technology that allows troops on either side of battle to understand the cool/witty one liners of the enemy.

    Sarge: "Oh my God they just killed Dave!!!"
    Private: "But ya gotta admit... what that guy just said... It was pretty fucking funny!"
    Sarge: "Yeah Chuckie, I suppose it was!"
    Sarge and Private: *high five*

    :)
  • Your good civillian; I mean you do not have the harm.

    What happen?
    Some one set us up the bomb!

  • Re:What about Waldos? (Score:3)

    by unitron ( 5733 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @12:22AM (#105204) Homepage Journal
    I was so sure that the name came from a character (named Waldo) in an Asimov story (that I read 35 years ago and it wasn't new then) that invented things that you stuck your hands in and that allowed remote manipulation of radioactive stuff, and when scientists actually developed them they had already read the story, so I went to Google and chanced upon a link [character-shop.com] to a company that discovered nobody had copyrighted the term, so they did. Looks like a lot of their stuff could be usable in an exoskeleton, especially "Warrior Waldo®".

    No doubt the "Where's Waldo®" people's lawyers will be sending them a nastygram first thing next week.

  • The potential for exoskeletons is amazing (Score:3)

    by Ukab the Great ( 87152 ) on Thursday July 05, 2001 @11:53PM (#105205)
    Finally there will be no jar that man cannot open

  • Test pilots needed! Volunteers? (Score:3)

    by magi ( 91730 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @01:39AM (#105206) Homepage Journal
    Testing the exoskeletons may produce many interesting results.

    Just imagine what would happen if the pants suddenly "detect" that the muscleman test pilot really wants to perform movements suitable for a ballet dancer.

    After a few pretty splits and bends, which all 15-year old ballerinas would envy, the pieces of the soldier's bones are collected from the suit with tweezers.

  • Re:Yikes. (Score:3)

    by orkysoft ( 93727 ) <orkysoft@m y r e a l b ox.com> on Friday July 06, 2001 @12:30AM (#105207) Journal
    Dr. Farnsworth: This is a universal translator. Unfortunately, it translates into an obscure dead language. HELLO!

    Translator: Bonjour!
  • English to Chinese and back via the fish -

    Source:
    Hello civillian; I mean you no harm. Please could you direct me and my men to the nearest source of fresh water. Please don't be alarmed by our huge pointy knives and lethal semi-automatic weapons.

    Result:
    Your good civillian; I mean you do not have the harm. Please can your directly I and my person to the fresh water most neighbor origin. Please do not report to the police by ours huge pointy knife and the lethal semi automatic weapon.

    N.B. there doesn't seem to be a Chinese word for civillian or pointy.

    Heh, so I guess maybe they're going to have fun working the kinks out.

  • Re:Yikes. (Score:3)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @06:58AM (#105209) Homepage
    Well, you have to expect that switching between a non-PIE language will cause some significant problems - there are different basic linguistic concepts between English and, say, Japanese. For example, picture the concept "with". Well, in almost all PIE languages, there is just one word. But, that word actually covers two concepts - "with" as in accompaniment, and "with" as in "by use of". In Japanese, it is two words - to and de, if I remember right. In Japanese, there are only two tenses - past, and present/future. However, they have 3 measures of distance instead of our "near/far" formed words (and they're much more regularly formed... we have "near", "here", "this", etc, vs "far", "there", "that" - no order whatsoever). In Japanese, the prefix "ko-" means "near, as in the speaker's location", "so-" means "far, as in the listener's location", and "a-", means "far, as in further than that" (there's also "do-" which makes it a question. There are just different linguistic balance issues that you really have to just take in context, and that even with a human translating, probably won't last a few back-and-forth cycles.

    Oh, and just as a side note, about how few exceptions there are in Japanese compared to english... cross those prefixes with the suffixes "-ko" (location), "-re" (pronouns), "-no" (adjectives), "-chira" (direction), "-nna" (manner, kind), and vowel lengthening, there's only one exception in the 24 combinations - "asoko" instead of "ako".

    -= rei =-

  • Background noise (Score:3)

    by cmclean ( 230069 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @01:29AM (#105210) Homepage Journal
    Having used a voicemail service [wildfire.com] which relies on voice-recognition for a couple of years now, I've been regularly annoyed at the fact that the slightest background noise (i.e. the sound made by the planet revolving) throws the recognition all to hell. How this new translation system will cope with background noise along the lines of tanks/APCs, choppers, gunfire, screaming locals etc. will a real test of it's useability IMO.

  • and other European languages ... (Score:3)

    by YeeHaW_Jelte ( 451855 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @02:07AM (#105211) Homepage
    English and Korean, Thai, Chinese, Arabic, Albanian, Spanish, and other major European languages.

    Wow. I knew the European Community was expanding, but I didn't know yet we'd come that far!


    ---
    Living is a way of life ...
  • Sure, I can see the benefit to applying this sort of technology to the handicapped, but do reasonably able bodied Americans need yet another way to get lazier? People get in their cars and DRIVE three blocks to the convenience mart, now they won't even have to burn ANY calories... getting in their car, going into the convenience mart, picking up the six-pack and Chee-tos and back home while exerting no more energy that it would to use the shitter.

  • The Wrong Trousers (Score:4)

    by shogun ( 657 ) on Thursday July 05, 2001 @11:52PM (#105213)
    Well at least they can't patent this one, Wallace and Grommit have prior art.

  • Comment removed (Score:4)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @12:26AM (#105214)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Possible other application (Score:4)

    by Dr_Cheeks ( 110261 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @01:09AM (#105215) Homepage Journal
    Well, we all know this is going to be used to make super powered soldiers that can turn over tanks with their bare hands etc. (incidentally, didn't they have one of these in Dark Angel), but I've got another use for it - the ultimate home exercise machine. Just set it to oppose movement instead of helping, and you've got an all-over workout that you can do while you're doing regular stuff. Assuming you're doing something more than just watching TV all day.

  • Yikes. (Score:4)

    by american dissident ( 465363 ) on Thursday July 05, 2001 @11:14PM (#105216)
    From the article on translators:
    The military is looking at using the system for many of its operations in foreign countries, Palmquist notes. "It is very intimidating when a Marine carrying a gun comes up to a civilian and asks a question and the civilian can't understand it," he says. "If you could more easily communicate with that person, a lot of tension is relieved. There is a certain benefit when the military is able to communicate with the local populace."

    Imagine a heavily armed marine striding up to you, asking you a question, and depending on a machine to translate the response. Would any us who have used babelfish [altavista.com] want our lives to depend on this technolgy? Yikes. The only question would be, should I just keep my mouth shut, or should I run like hell?

  • Re:The potential for exoskeletons is amazing (Score:5)

    by nyet ( 19118 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @12:18AM (#105217) Homepage
    except one tightened by a dude with an exoskeleton on.

  • Better, more humane application (Score:5)

    by Brento ( 26177 ) <brento.brentozar@com> on Thursday July 05, 2001 @11:06PM (#105218) Homepage
    Jacobsen says he's thinking in the opposite direction--about putting more human nature into the machines. His idea is to build an exoskeleton intelligent enough to take care of the soldier wearing it. If the human trooper is badly wounded, the machine would say to itself, in effect, "Take this guy home."

    Wow, I see another use for these. If the exoskeleton gives me the ability to lift very heavy objects, and it can take me home when I get into trouble, then suddenly I can become ... that's right ... the world's best power drinker! Woohoo! Homer Simpson would be jealous. I could lift full-size kegs to my mouth to extract the last drops of sweet beer. I could win every bar fight. And when things get really ugly, it takes over, walks straight home, and I'm in bed before I even know it.

  • Re:Yikes. (Score:5)

    by magi ( 91730 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @12:32AM (#105219) Homepage Journal
    I babelfished the text from English to French and back:

    The soldiers look by using the system for several of its executions in the foreign countries, notes of Palmquist. " it is very intimidating when a navy carrying a gun goes up to civil and puts a question and the civil one cannot include/understand it, " says to him. " if you could more easily communicate with this person, much of tension is relieved. There is a certain advantage when the soldiers can communicate with the local rabble."

    Rabble? Yeah, that probably communicates the attitude of american soldiers towards local populace correctly. Good luck!

    Otherwise, the back-and-forth-translation was amazingly good.

  • Rabble? Yeah, that probably communicates the attitude of american soldiers towards local populace correctly. Good luck!

    How in the hell do you know what the attitude of the average American soldier is? Maybe you've been watching a few too many Vietnam War movies, and haven't been keeping up on current events.

    Over the past 10 years or so, the US military has been involved in literally dozens of relief and peacekeeping operations around the world. I know, I was involved one of them, and guess what? Believe it or not, American soldiers were helping people. We didn't kill anyone. We saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives, and we developed close relationships with many of the local people.

    As a matter of fact, our battalion had three translators, all of them local, who were invaluable. A reliable automated translator would have been very helpful as an augment to the human translators. It would have helped us save lives and keep good people from being killed by people who happened to be well-armed.

    Some people are stupid and uncaring. Some are smart and sensitive to the people around them. Most are somewhere in between. While it's any easy excuse for a joke, your comment is a gross oversimplification.

  • The visionaries have seen it coming ...... (Score:5)

    by Lowther ( 136426 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @12:17AM (#105221)
    With all of these things, we should remember that the great visionaries have forseen the dangers already.In the seminal and prophetic work "The Wrong Trousers" starring Wallace and Gromit, we saw a graphic demonstration of what happens if the security of exoskeleton trousers is suborned by a 'black hat' (or in this case a red glove).

    Hope the code for driving these exoskeletons is open source. I want to be able to see what it does !!

    I fear that M$ may choose to implement raw sockets (eye sockets, mainly) in Skeleton XP. Crackers will take over my suit, and use it to kick random passers-by and dogs to death. Or alternately, a trapdoor in closed source suits will allow the CIA to orchestrate massed ranks of publicly owned trousers to invade Cuba or something. A new angle on conscription, clearly.....

    On a positive note, clearly of interest would be a Beowulf cluster of exoskeletons, which could be used for formation dancing and even synchronised swimming and minefield clearance.

  • Re:Yikes. (Score:5)

    by Dreyfus ( 176426 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @12:36AM (#105222)
    Civilian: Don't shoot me! I'm am bursting with joy to see so many American soldiers, thanks be to God!
    Translator: Don't shoot me! For I am laden with explosives to joyously kill many American soldiers for the glory of Allah!

    Civilian: No, I was not hiding from you! I just stepped behind the bush to take a leak!
    Translator: I cannot hide my feelings from you! I piss all over your American president!

    Civilian: Let me go, please! For the sake of my wife of many years, and my young daughters who love me!
    Translator: Let me go, please, and my wife and my virgin daughters, they love you long time!

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