DARPA Warrior Web Supersuit Projects targets helping soldiers to Enhance Endurance and Strength to enable Soldiers to Run 4 Minute Miles

DARPA’s Warrior Web would protect injury-prone areas by stabilizing and reducing stresses on joints and promoting efficient and safe movement over a wide range of activities, he said.

While protecting against injury, Warrior Web also seeks to make Soldiers into better performers by giving them the feeling of a lighter load and enhancing their existing physical capabilities.

“We’re assessing new technologies that could even allow a Soldier to run a four-minute mile,” Hitt said. “For example, we have components such as motors and springs integrated into a suit which will augment the work performed by the muscles in the legs. This may be a pathway to enhancing performance.”

Such performance enhancement may sound like science fiction.

“The theory behind it is if you can provide enough force to the runner, you could probably have them do a four-minute mile,” said Michael LaFiandra, chief of the Dismounted Warrior Branch at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. “We’re skeptical because we’re researchers and it’s part of our job to question everything. But, they’re bringing the technology here. They want to demonstrate this four-minute mile concept and we’re hopeful that they can do it.”

The current Navy Seal Fitness requirement is to run 1.5 miles wearing boots and long pants in 11.5 minutes (7.67 minute miles)

“Thirty months from today, we will outfit a squad with our suits and we will compete against a squad without them in activities such as the 12-mile rucksack march, marksmanship and the obstacle course,” Hitt said. “Our vision is to significantly reduce the time it takes to do a rucksack march and then when you get onto the marksmanship course, you’re almost as fresh as if you hadn’t marched at all.”

A soft robotic exoskeleton, pulled on like a pair of pants, could one day give athletes an extra kick or soldiers the strength to lift heavier loads than their muscles alone could bear.

The soft suit is much lighter than the hard prosthetic exoskeletons, weighing just 7.5 kilograms (not including the air supply that drives the artificial “muscles”). Also, the suit relies on the existing movement of the legs as a person walks — its talent is adding a crucial nudge at the just right moment.

The suit’s performance was tested by five healthy members of the Wyss lab — all male — after they trained to use it for about three days. It’s confusing to react to the suit at first, but once a person adjusts to the push-and-pull of the suit, you feel the difference, Walsh said. “When you wear it, you feel like you’re getting a bit of a boost. After you stop wearing it, you notice that you don’t have that extra assist any more.”

Getting that timing right is important for the suit to work efficiently, sort of like how finding just the right moment to push a person on a swing set can keep them going fairly efficiently for a long time, Walsh explained. This means the suit needs to be an active sensor of a person’s gait as well. “If that timing is off it can actually make it harder for people to walk.”

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