Imagine stepping into a massive machine, feeling the thrill as you realize that even the slightest movement of your arm can control a 9,000-pound mechanical giant. This is the exhilarating experience of piloting Prosthesis, a real-life mech suit that blurs the lines between science fiction and reality. This incredible machine can lift cars, traverse rocky terrains, and move across various landscapes, all while being entirely human-controlled.
Standing at four meters tall and five meters wide, Prosthesis is an engineering marvel weighing more than twice the average car. While you might assume such technology was designed for space exploration or military use, its creator, Jonathan Tippett, had a different vision. He built Prosthesis to race, aiming to create a new sport centered around human skill and experience. Unlike the combat-focused mech suits of science fiction, Prosthesis is all about the thrill of human control.
Jonathan’s journey began with an art project for Burning Man, where he envisioned a machine that celebrated human skill augmented by technology. In 2006, he sketched the first designs, which resembled a gorilla. For several years, he refined these sketches and worked on the engineering challenges of building such a large machine.
By 2010, Jonathan and his team had developed the Alpha Leg, a precursor to Prosthesis. This experimental machine proved that a human could control a mech suit from within, maintaining control even in dynamic situations. Using the Alpha Leg as a foundation, Prosthesis was constructed over a year and made its debut at CES in 2017. Initially, the machine faced skepticism, but Jonathan’s vision of mech racing persisted.
Jonathan envisions a future where mech racing involves navigating complex obstacle courses with professional athletes piloting these powerful suits. Between 2017 and 2019, his team focused on refining the control system, making it more ergonomic and intuitive. The result is a 4,000-kilogram, 200-horsepower, all-electric mech suit designed for competitive sports. Named Prosthesis the Anti Robot, it emphasizes human control over automation.
Prosthesis operates much like the giant robots seen in movies, but it requires a human pilot to function. To enter, you climb to the top and squeeze through a small opening into the cockpit. Once inside, the control interface molds to your body, becoming surprisingly comfortable. The machine amplifies the pilot’s inputs, allowing for precise control.
The dashboard in front of the pilot powers up hydraulic pumps, which activate the machine’s movements. Your arms control the outer legs, while your legs manage the inner ones. With practice, the mech becomes an extension of yourself, and piloting it becomes second nature.
Jonathan’s ultimate goal is to establish a mech racing league with trained pilots. The Alpha Mech Pilot Program aims to recruit diverse individuals and identify the skills needed for successful piloting. Interestingly, it’s not about strength but rather body awareness, making it accessible to those with backgrounds in gymnastics or snowboarding.
Looking ahead, Jonathan and his team are already planning the next generation of mechs. These new machines will be smaller, lighter, and more powerful, potentially reaching speeds of 15 to 20 kilometers per hour. In five to ten years, they hope to achieve speeds of 20 to 30 kilometers per hour.
Despite facing skepticism, Jonathan remains undeterred. He believes that pushing the boundaries of technology and human skill can lead to groundbreaking innovations. While the primary focus is on sport, the development of mech suits could have applications in search and rescue missions or even space exploration.
By building a racing league, Jonathan hopes to nurture this technology in a competitive environment, unlocking its full potential over the next few years. The possibilities for mech racing and its associated technologies are vast and exciting, promising a future where human-driven mech suits become a thrilling reality.
Imagine you are an engineer tasked with creating the next generation of mech suits. Sketch your design, focusing on features that enhance human control and agility. Consider the materials, power sources, and control interfaces you would use. Share your design with classmates and discuss the potential challenges and innovations your mech suit could bring to the sport of mech racing.
Participate in a virtual simulation of a mech race. Use software to navigate a digital obstacle course, focusing on the skills needed for precise control and agility. Reflect on the experience and discuss how it compares to the real-life challenges faced by mech pilots. Consider what improvements could be made to enhance the simulation’s realism.
Delve into the physics behind mech suits like Prosthesis. Analyze the mechanics of movement, balance, and control. Conduct experiments to understand how forces are distributed in a mech suit and how pilots maintain stability. Present your findings in a group discussion, highlighting the engineering principles that make mech suits possible.
Engage in a debate about the future of mech racing. Consider the potential benefits and challenges of establishing a mech racing league. Discuss the ethical implications, technological advancements, and societal impacts. Formulate arguments for and against the widespread adoption of mech racing as a sport.
Conduct an interview with a professional involved in the development of mech suits. Prepare questions about the engineering challenges, design process, and future prospects of mech racing. Share insights from the interview with your peers, providing a real-world perspective on the innovations and obstacles in the field.
You lift yourself up and start to feel the balance of the machine. Your arms control the outside legs, your legs control the inside legs, but really, you pilot it with your gut. All of a sudden, you realize that if you so much as twitch your arm, the whole 9,000-pound machine will move, and then you realize what you’re in for. That’s when it gets exciting. We’re taking you inside a real-life human-driven mech suit that blurs the lines between science fiction and reality. This mechanical behemoth can lift a car, climb over boulders, and move over all kinds of terrain. It’s called Prosthesis.
Standing four meters tall and five meters wide, the machine towers over you and weighs more than twice your average car. You may think that this technology was built to explore Mars or to be used by the military, but its inventor had other ideas. The thing was built to race. It was built to rip around the countryside. Mech suits, or powered exoskeletons, are typically something you’d see in science fiction. But mechanical engineer Jonathan Tippett is hoping to change your mind. Mech suits in sci-fi have all had a very specific purpose, essentially for combat, which has not been an inspiration for him. This has always been about the human experience.
When Jonathan started to articulate why it was so important to build this machine that was human-controlled and required skill, it became apparent that what he was creating was a sports machine. That’s right, Jonathan wants to race his mechs. But we’ll come back to that later. First, let’s dig into the origins of Prosthesis. The machine itself started as an art project for Burning Man. He wanted to build a machine that celebrated human skill and augmented it using technology while still keeping a human at the heart. In 2006, he did the first sketch of the machine, and back then, it was very gorilla-shaped. For about five or six years, he just did sketches and engineering, trying to figure out the mechanics of how to make a machine of that scale.
Then around 2010, Jonathan and a team of engineers started building the predecessor to Prosthesis, called the Alpha Leg. The Alpha Leg was a wild machine that proved the basic concept that you could control an exoskeletal mech suit from inside while being hurled around by it without losing control. Using the Alpha Leg as a jumping-off point, Prosthesis was built over the course of a year. By 2017, it was ready for its worldwide debut at CES. At that point, the machine barely worked, and they had a hard time convincing the world that this would lead to a racing league.
The vision for mech racing is a giant complex technical obstacle course, with pro-level athletes strapped into these super powerful, agile mech suits navigating the obstacles. However, the technology was still a long way from Jonathan’s vision. So they went underground, and between 2017 and 2019, they iterated the control system multiple times, making the interface more ergonomic and comfortable. The result was a 4,000-kilogram, 200-horsepower, all-electric, human-controlled mech suit built for competitive sport. Its full name is Prosthesis the Anti Robot, specifically called that because it’s not a robot. A robot, by definition, has some level of autonomy. The goal of this machine is to not automate. This is a mech suit, an exoskeleton.
Prosthesis is engineered to work like the giant robots and mech suits you might see in movies. The mech is controlled by a person. Without a human, it can’t go anywhere or do anything. You have to climb onto the top of the machine, and there’s a small opening in the roof through which you enter. Once you squeeze your way into the cockpit, you expand into a body-shaped control interface, and it suddenly becomes comfortable. The control system picks up the pilot’s inputs and amplifies them significantly.
There’s a dashboard in front of the pilot, and you power up the pumps. The hydraulic pumps give power to the hydraulic cylinders, which make the machine move. The machine comes online, and you grip the handgrip, activating the controls, and the machine jolts into life. Your arms control the outside legs, your legs control the inside legs, but really, you just feel it. You practice enough, and it just becomes part of you. From there on, it’s all up to the pilot’s skill to balance the machine, and that’s where the fun starts.
And by fun, he means taking it out to the Mojave Desert or the forests of British Columbia! But that’s far from the end goal. Jonathan wants a full-on racing league with trained pilots controlling these massive mech suits. To realize this dream, he’s started to recruit pilots. One of the goals of the Alpha Mech Pilot Program is to bring different kinds of people into the sport and learn what kind of skills make a good mech pilot. Generally, good body awareness, people who do gymnastics and snowboarding. What they’re finding is that it’s skill-based, not strength-based, even though it’s a huge machine.
In addition to new recruits, Jonathan and his team of engineers are already looking ahead to the next phase of development. Now that they’re starting to reach the limits of this machine’s potential, the timeline to building the next generation of mechs is a lot shorter than 14 years. They would like to see the next generation of mech come out in the next 12 to 18 months. It will probably be two-thirds the size, half the weight, and twice the power. They think they could see that machine doing 15 to 20 kilometers an hour. In five to ten years, they envision speeds of 20 to 30 kilometers an hour.
While new suits and professional pilots would bring mech racing one step closer to reality, there are some critics. There’s been no shortage of skeptics over the years. Usually, when Jonathan is met with incredulity or skepticism and people ask why he is doing this, it just spurs him to try harder. If people shied away from things that seemed crazy, there would be no innovation. It’s this idea of pushing technology and human skill to its limits that could lead to exoskeletons developed for search and rescue missions or mechs engineered to explore Mars.
Obviously, the core purpose for this is sport, but building a racing league first gives an opportunity to incubate that technology in the heat of competition. The potential for this technology and this sport over the next two to five years is almost limitless.
Engineering – The application of scientific and mathematical principles to design and build structures, machines, and systems. – Engineering students often work on projects that involve creating sustainable energy solutions.
Technology – The use of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry. – Advances in technology have significantly improved the efficiency of manufacturing processes.
Control – The ability to manage and regulate the behavior or operation of a system or process. – Engineers must design control systems that ensure the stability of an aircraft during flight.
Mechanics – The branch of physics that deals with the motion of objects and the forces that affect them. – Understanding the mechanics of materials is crucial for civil engineers when designing bridges.
Innovation – The introduction of new ideas, methods, or devices in technology and engineering. – Innovation in renewable energy technologies is essential for reducing global carbon emissions.
Racing – The competitive pursuit of speed, often involving vehicles or machines designed for high performance. – The engineering team focused on aerodynamics to improve the car’s performance in the racing competition.
Pilot – A person who operates the controls of an aircraft or spacecraft. – The pilot relied on advanced navigation systems engineered for precise control during the flight.
Design – The process of creating plans, drawings, or models to show the look and function of a system or object before it is built. – The design phase of the project involved extensive simulations to ensure the structure could withstand seismic activity.
Dynamics – The study of forces and motion in systems, often used to analyze the behavior of physical systems. – In mechanical engineering, understanding the dynamics of moving parts is essential for optimizing machine performance.
Automation – The use of technology to perform tasks with minimal human intervention, often to improve efficiency and accuracy. – Automation in manufacturing has led to increased production rates and reduced labor costs.
