tech blog

a bionic machine that lets you:

1) It takes up to 200 pounds without impeding the wearer (Strength Augmentation)

2) It decreases its wearer's metabolic cost (Endurance Augmentation).

While the first characteristic requires little explanation, the 2nd characteristic is a compelling and a competitive advantage of HULC™ completely absent in any other exoskeleton system. During some preliminary evaluations, the oxygen consumption of the users walking at a speed of 2 MPH, was decreased by 5%~12% when using our HULC™ without a payload. When the users carried a load, the effect was more pronounced. The oxygen consumption of these users carrying an 81 pound approach load at a speed of 2MPH was decreased by about 15% when using the prototype HULC™.

The reduction of the wearer's metabolic cost is of paramount importance for long duration missions. This is true because excessive oxygen consumption leads to premature fatigue even if the exoskeleton supports the load. In fact, a very recent BAA from the Natick Soldier System Center requests proposals to conduct a preliminary study on solutions that lead to a reduction of oxygen consumption. HULC™, fueled by proprietary technology, decreases the wearer's oxygen consumption and heart rate thereby increasing the wearer's endurance.

Several field ready HULCs™ will be available for live demonstration in early 2008. Berkeley Bionics is now accepting orders for prototype HULC™ systems.


http://www.berkeleybionics.com/Unrestricted/HULC.html

Opensuse 11 rc 1 was released by novell.Hundreds of bugs have been since the alpha release.IThe installation went perfectly without any problems.Even in this release the nvidia driver dosen't compile yet.

from Novell

The openSUSE Project is proud to announce the openSUSE 11.0 Release Candidate 1 (RC1). The good news is that we’re closing in on the final release of 11.0, but it’s not time to relax just yet. We’re getting really close, so we need all hands on deck to help test this release candidate. Since beta 3 we’ve fixed 578 bugs and resolved 1,118 bugs! Read on to see how you can help get 11.0 into top shape.

The first step is to download the release candidate. Please remember that RC1 is not a stable release. As a release candidate, openSUSE 11.0 RC 1 is almost ready for day to day use, but may still have some interesting bugs that make it unsuitable for running a production system. Be sure to have backups of any important data before using openSUSE 11.0 RC 1 on a system.

Media and Download
You can download openSUSE 11.0 RC 1 for x86, x86_64, and PPC at http://software.opensuse.org/developer. Deltas from Beta 3 are also provided. Note that you will need the latest deltarpm from Factory, or for openSUSE 10.3 you can use the home:coolo repository to grab it.

Most Annoying Bugs
This is a list of the most annoying bugs, that we’re aware of, that still exist in the release candidate.

General
GRUB config broken for other partitions. Bug #395085
NVIDIA driver doesn’t compile. Workaround: check here for a patch
GNOME
GNOME asks for the root password on first login. Bug 390658
GNOME has wrong icon theme by default. Bug 391865
See the Bugs:Most_Annoying_Bugs_11.0_dev page on the wiki for an up-to-date list.

Call for Testing
To help testing, take a look at opensuse.org/Testing, and the Feature Test List page. The Feature Test List page includes a definitive list of new features included in openSUSE 11.0.

We need to test these features in particular, so please look through the features on the page, pick one that has not yet had its test completed, and make sure it passes. If not, be sure to file a bug in Bugzilla and mark the test “failed.” See the full instructions on the Feature Test List page.