PLEASE hear me out before you disregard it. I'm very serious, and this may be VERY feasible.

I want to make a suit, and here is my basic visualization of it in text:

It would consist of an exoskeleton consisting of pipes (more like bars) of a lightweight metal, probably aluminum. It would mimic the capabilities of the human body: it would have joints and hinges and rotary male/female sockets (shoulders) and would mimic movements of the human body, most notably, the wrists, forearms, ankles, and the balls of your feet.

There will be strategically placed small motors, and the motors would be set up on gearings to pull cables, to mimic the contracting of muscle.

Seems pretty straightforward, but it gets a bit more complicated now.

I want to put pressure switches, so the motor-cable setup would "contract" proportionately to the pressure on the switches by the user. These pressure switches would be strategically placed to pick up signals from the user, and would be computed to tell the motors what to do. Briefly thinking, I imagine there will be a pressure switch between the shin and the skeletal "armor", and when depressed my my shin trying to straighten out and being blocked by the armor, it would tell the motors that I want to straighten out my leg via knee-joint.

Another idea is that the joints themselves may have sensors and when there is slight stress on these joints or when the sensors realize the operator wants certain joints to move in a specific direction, the computer would tell the motor-cables to relieve the stress, and/or supplement the movement with superhuman force.

Also, I want each motor-cable to have an adjustable amount of pressure on at all times. Let me expand why: Let's take the knee for example. The motor wanting to extend the knee would be pulling at 100lbs, and the flipside motor, the one wanting to contract the knee would also be pulling at 100lbs canceling each other out. Sounds useless, but let me explain why.

To pick up a weight from the floor (w/o armor), you have to flex your lower body and abs to do so. With constant pressure on both motor-cables, the limb that they're on will constantly be flexed. I can hit a switch to shut off the sensors in the needed places and they'll be "flexed".

And while writing about this, I got another idea. instead of the motors "pulling", with constant force I would be able to just give "let off" on the counteracting motor, and viola, we've got movement.
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So there's a brief idea what it would consist of.

I'm working on the 3-D design in SolidWorks.

I'M NOT DOING THIS STRICTLY FOR FUN. I'm majoring in Mechanical Engineering, also trying to transfer from a Junior College to a four-year university. I want to do this project over the years to finalize my portfolio. Good engineering school here are HIGHLY competitive, and I think this would give me quite the edge.

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Here's where you guys help.

What software would I need, or would I have to write my own?
I don't know how to write software, but I'm more than willing to learn. I'm getting into software engineering, too.

What motors and cables (or wire) should I use?
It has to be fairly cheap, I can't be buying a power drill for every major joint in our body. I also saw something on mythbusters, where they try to mimic the tool Batman uses to shoot a wire-and-barb into a wall that pulls him to safety. Jamie mentioned something about using a VERY powerful yet small electric motor in his device. It pulled him twentyish feet up high, and that guy has to be about 180 Lbs.

Would there be any way of using one motor for multiple joints?
I didn't think so, but I wanted all the motors to be in a backpack-type setup, and one motor-cable to emulate the shoulder/bicep/forearm, but the problem is: if I want to move my wrist towards my shoulder, and it goes up all the way, the motor would then pull my elbow towards my face. Maybe this problem could be fixed somehow.

Circuitry.
Where would I learn it? A tech class, or a book? Would it be fairly simple, or as hard as it gets?

The Sensors.
I want to outsource for parts, I mean I don't want to make the whole think from soda cans in neighborhood recycle bins. I think I'd go for the sensors in the joints, rather than pressure switches between the armor and the user. What kind of sensors would I use? where can I find them?

Does anyone have any links to very good robotic prosthetics?
Anything I can soak stuff up from? Maybe I should look through patents for the sensors.

and yes, I've already seen the video for the XOS "The Real Iron Man" I'm pretty much making the exact same thing, just with cables instead of pumps

I plan on this project to last me YEARS.

On a side note, another project I wanted to do was to mimic the "Bat-Cape" in batman begins. Well, Morgan Freeman tells Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins that when an electric current is run through the medium, it would stiffen up, but while without one, it would be soft and flexible. I wanted to make one that contracts instead of stiffening up, more so to mimic the contraction of human muscles.

The military and private corporations are spending millions, possibly billions, on something like this... good luck...

Pretty much. Basically, even with all the materials, money, manpower, and knowledge one could possibly attain, you're gonna be pretty limited by physical limits. Also, aluminum? What are you planning to do, crush chipmunks? Cause that's all it'll be able to do. Aluminum is fairly soft.

http://www.shadowrobot.com/airmuscles/overview.shtml

Use compressed air, it's slightly more feasible than the hideous monster that would be created with pulleys and gears

OP, if your name is Sam Sullivan you need to give me a call right now, dude.

This is like a portfolio project, or a tinker-around-project.

Also, I want to use wire because it doesn't take up the as much whereas the "air-muscles" would pose a problem.

I think the main problem here is software and sensors involved. God damn I wish I could just download a fucking program.

Those things are pretty neato.

And this is quite the expensive thingto make...why not make a scale model that is radio controlled?

My Idea was simpler.
http://www.totse.com/community//show....php?t=2134318

i was thinking of something like this a while back, and there were a few problems that i thought of

1) power system
youre going to be using motors that can achieve superhuman strength. youll need something to power all that. you need a generator that can meet your power demands. the only solution i can think of is to build your machine to be very large, and house a large generator

2)stabilisation
your centre of mass must be pretty low, and your machine's feet must cover a wide area or else it would tip over when it carries a heavy load. also, when lifting heavy objects, you dont want to put strain on your feet, so your real feet should not really be attached to any pressure detection devices

3)weight
its gonna be heavy. the legs would have to support the weight of the entire device. again, i suggest you make it large (as tall as a house) and make the legs really thick.

4) noise
more of a mute point, just wear earplugs



also, i dont think it is necessary to do any programming at all. pressure sensors controlling current flow (which would control the power exhibited by a limb). also, consider using hydraulics rather than pulleys.

also, if anything, read up on biomedical engineering for ideas of making limbs and stuff. im acutally learning this at university

You may actually want to look into Leonardo Da Vinci's work in robotics. He made suits of armor that would walk, move arms independently, etc. out of a simple, yet elegant system of ropes and pulleys. Obviously, what you're talking about would be far more complex, but the basic principals are the same and I think you could get a few good ideas from looking at his work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo%27s_robot