Simulation: Great Power Technology

(The last chapter was 260, I made a typo again)

The next morning, Ye Zhou followed Chen Hao to an army base near Rongcheng, where Ye Zhou finally saw the domestic mechanical exoskeleton he had been curious about.

According to the plan that Chen Hao communicated with the military in advance, this visit was divided into two parts. The first part was a demonstration of tactical movements by professional soldiers mounted on the exoskeleton, and the second part was when Ye Zhou tried it out in person.

Various types of equipment have already been arranged on the shooting range, including combat vehicles, artificial obstacles, artillery shells, dummy wounded, etc., all of which will be used as props to demonstrate the performance of the mechanical exoskeleton later.

The soldiers participating in the demonstration have been assembled. Ye Zhou and Chen Hao are standing aside, accompanied by several cadres in the army. They are briefly introducing the content of the demonstration to Ye Zhou before the demonstration begins.

"Mr. Ye, the subsequent demonstrations mainly have several parts. We divide them according to the functions of the arms. Now they are mainly infantry, artillery, logistics, and medical soldiers. The most important part is the artillery. Others The use of mechanical exoskeletons is not particularly perfect for the time being, and some tactical actions cannot be adapted, especially high-intensity tactical actions, such as climbing, jumping, etc., which are relatively limited."

Ye Zhou nodded, he had already expected such a situation, so he couldn't be disappointed.

The current mechanical exoskeleton generally uses two sets of systems. The first system can be simply called the load-bearing system, that is, the reduction system. Real-time force feedback, disassembles the force of a single position through the servos scattered in different positions of the mechanical skeleton, and transmits it to other parts of the body, or directly to the sole of the foot.

The other system is the motion system, which is based on series elastic drive. After the joint force feedback is calculated by the force impedance control system, the high-torque DC motor is driven to perform torsional storage on the elastic device inside the machine, generally speaking, the spring. energy, and then use the spring energy to realize the accelerated movement of the joints, and the final result is to achieve labor-saving and acceleration in the ordinary movement process.

Simply put, the weight system allows the user to lift heavier objects, while the motion system allows the user to jump higher and run faster.

But the problem is that the complexity of the motion system is much more complicated than that of the weight-bearing system, especially in the speed of re-energy storage, even the direct-drive drive with the highest power density, which is several times more than the muscle density, in terms of response speed. It's also slightly slower than the muscles, so this causes the exoskeleton user to experience a slight lag when performing fast movements.

If you want to describe this sense of lag, the best example is the kind of three-one-board activity that most people have played at the Children's Day activities at school, where everyone's feet are fixed on the longboard at the same time. Before synchronization is achieved, the stagnation felt by the person who started it first is the stagnation of the current mechanical exoskeleton.

However, in theory, this kind of delay can also be overcome by training - this again involves the two sets of muscle memory problems that Ye Zhou said before.

Just as his thoughts were drifting away, the drill on the shooting range not far away had already started. Ye Zhou regained his thoughts and started watching the drill seriously.

The artillerymen were the first to appear. I saw a soldier who was not very tall walking to the ammunition box, firmly holding the edge of the ammunition box with his hand, and then with a little force, the ammunition box with a length of more than one meter was easily lifted.

"This is the ammunition box of the d30 122mm howitzer. It is loaded with 3 rounds and weighs 22 kilograms, which means that he has no pressure to lift objects close to 70 kilograms at one time. And Mr. Ye, look, keep up with the previous generation of machinery. The exoskeleton is different, this exoskeleton has a great improvement in flexibility and work error rate."

"The main thing is that the speed of human-machine interaction has become faster - because we have changed to stronger motors."

Ye Zhou nodded, he could see the movements of the artillery on the shooting range, as the expert beside him said, compared to the clumsy and slow exoskeleton devices he had seen on the news, this time he What I saw was obviously much stronger.

At least, in the process of the artilleryman executing his entire set of movements, no link was particularly mechanical, and even looking at it as a whole gave Ye Zhou a sense of flowing water.

The shell was loaded, but the soldiers did not fire on the spot, but continued to demonstrate other operations such as issuing the plow, manpower towing the artillery, and quickly transferring the artillery in an emergency.

From these operations, Ye Zhou could clearly feel that the strength of a single soldier had been amplified a lot, and some movements that were impossible to accomplish in their hands had become easier in their hands.

Afterwards, the logistics and medics' displays were similar, but Ye Zhou's eyes lit up with the fast horizontal stretcher on the medic's back. It stretched out like the courier box on the back of the courier in Death Stranding. The body of the wounded is automatically fixed by the locking mechanism of each part, freeing up the hands of the medics, and the outer wall also bears a part of the protective effect.

However, apart from that, Ye Zhou really didn't see any new bright spots.

After the demonstration of these three arms was completed, Ye Zhou's long-awaited demonstration of infantry combatants finally began. I saw that the soldiers on the shooting range had modified exoskeletons mounted on them, and they were carrying a single model of unknown model on their backs. There is a recoilless gun, a avant-garde-12 individual air defense missile, a 95 light machine gun, an ots-11 integrated system rifle in his hand, and various ammunition and other explosive equipment hanging on his chest. Fire monster!

The slightly bloated soldiers ran between the shooting positions on the shooting range, testing their weapons one by one, and the targets set in the distance were blown to smithereens.

Seeing this scene, Ye Zhou couldn't help but sigh.

I haven't paid attention to the development of the Army in the past few years. I didn't expect that their fear of insufficient firepower has developed to such a degree...

4 kinds of weapons, which are aimed at medium armored ground targets, helicopters, group infantry, and conventional infantry, each of which can play a vital role.

Especially the recoilless gun that looks a bit like Gustav, which is not light at first sight, it is really hard to imagine how the rabbit would equip such a thing to the level of a single soldier.

After all the demonstrations were over, Ye Zhou basically figured out the flaws of the current exoskeleton.

As he thought, delay is still the biggest problem. When the infantry is fully loaded, their whole body load exceeds 60 kg. The load-bearing system and the movement system must work synchronously, which brings huge synergy pressure.

Therefore, this soldier often appears extremely cumbersome when performing some fine movements such as lying down, crawling, jumping over, and jumping.

After frowning and thinking for a while, Ye Zhou asked:

"Why cram so many weapons into one soldier?"

The commander beside him froze in place.

Why?

This seems to be a question that touches the soul. He has many reasons, but he can't say it for a while.

After pondering for a few seconds, he said:

"Mr. Ye, our considerations are as follows. From the perspective of the development direction of modern warfare, the fighting distance has been in the process of continuously increasing, from the 17th century queuing and shooting, to the 19th century, 300 to 500 meters. Up to now, the engagement range of the light infantry has a tendency to develop beyond the line of sight."

"So, based on this trend, coupled with the increase in mechanization, we generally believe that it is no longer meaningful to pursue the high mobility and concealment of a single combat unit of infantry, and the most important thing is the ability to project individual firepower. "

"We want to achieve a soldier who can fight both tanks and planes to form a fully functional combat unit."

"To form such a combat unit, the number of weapons a soldier can carry is very important... You can see it, and the final result is like this."

"is that useful?"

Ye Zhou asked curiously.

"From the exercise we conducted some time ago, to be honest, it is very useful. After a light infantry platoon has achieved sufficient firepower advantage, with a reasonable command, it can completely pose a major threat to the traditional mechanized infantry company. We even There was a case where one squad destroyed the opponent's four tanks and two helicopters."

"So exaggerated?"

Ye Zhou's eyes widened. It wasn't that he didn't understand the military, and he also knew the importance of firepower for light infantry combat, but he didn't expect that the result of firepower advantage would be exaggerated to such an extent.

The commander nodded and replied:

"It's an exaggeration - of course, the cost of a single soldier is also very high. Basically, two or three soldiers are equivalent to a multi-purpose vehicle. However, we don't really care about the cost now, because the weapons and equipment are expensive. It can be mass-produced, but if personnel are lost, there is really no way to replenish them.”

"That's really... well, I'm going to try your exoskeleton first."

"It's ready for you."

While talking, the commander took Ye Zhou to the edge of the shooting range. In order to let him experience the whole process completely, he did not arrange for other personnel to assist, but let Ye Zhou put on the mechanical exoskeleton himself.

Ye Zhou did not encounter any difficulties during this process. He found that the exoskeleton was much better in ergonomics than he had imagined. The degrees of freedom of each joint had reached an extremely fine level. The wrist and wrist are also done with full DOF.

This makes the whole wearing process extremely smooth. Coupled with the control of the intelligent system, all parts can be automatically locked and fitted after confirmation. From the beginning of wearing to the end of the maintenance, the total time spent does not exceed 5 minutes.

The weapon mounting is also extremely user-friendly. The movable bracket behind you is controlled by the console on the inside of the arm. Press the corresponding mechanical button, and the rack behind you will automatically unfold to a position where it can be removed.

Ye Zhou tried the operation a few times, then started running back and forth on the shooting range, and even tried to do a few jumps. Later, he found that the logic of this operation was really not that simple to adapt to.

For example, according to the intuitive operation, a jump only needs to bend the legs and unfold, but in the overloaded state, this exoskeleton has an additional energy storage process, which also leads to a fatal problem:

He couldn't jump while running.

This alone has severely limited the variety of tactical moves.

After using it for a while, Ye Zhou basically summed up the problems of this mecha.

The action delay is long, the energy storage process is long, and the flexibility is still insufficient.

Therefore, this is what really caused "the reason why you can't walk after removing the exoskeleton", not the "action force feedback difference" that Chen Hao judged before.

Ye Zhou walked back to the edge of the shooting range, and while removing the exoskeleton, he said to Chen Hao, who was waiting on the side:

"I verified a great man's quote today: Without investigation, there is no voice."

"What do you mean?"

"You will know when you come and wear it yourself. The root cause of this exoskeleton is not the power assist system, but the force feedback system."

"From force feedback to power assistance, we still use pure physical conduction at present, just like playing a three-person board. The person behind must first feel the force of your leg lift before they can lift their legs synchronously."

"The longer the delay in this process, the greater the difference between the operation logic and the movement logic in the normal state. The final result is that once the armor is removed, you will not be able to walk."

Hearing Ye Zhou's words, the commander on the side nodded again and again.

"That's right! That's the problem! Our warriors' feedback is mainly about this issue."

There was a look of surprise on his face. Although he didn't know the origin of this young man named Ye Zhou who came today, judging from the performance of the other party, he was most likely a big man in the field of exoskeletons, specially sent to solve the problem. of.

Thinking of this, he immediately asked:

"Mr. Ye, is there a way to solve this problem?"

Ye Zhou pondered for a moment, then answered:

"I'm really not a major in this field, so I can't make too many suggestions on specific technical details, but I think we can start from two directions."

"The first is to take the artificial intelligence route, record the user's exercise habits through the central processing unit, and make a model of the movement state of a single muscle and muscle group. The movement of the anterior muscle group predicts the user's next move."

"This kind of logic is equivalent to what is said in martial arts. You don't look at the hands, but the shoulders. The reason is the same."

"However, the technical level required for this kind of artificial intelligence is too high, and I estimate that it will be difficult to achieve in the short term."

"So, I have an idea. Although it looks fantastic, it has basically been applied, and it is said to be a good idea."

"you say!"

The commander stared at Ye Zhou closely, as if he was afraid that he would run away.

Ye Zhou coughed and said:

"Develop a neural control system, skip force feedback directly, and use neural electrical signals to control the mechanical exoskeleton synchronously."