The science of Sony's 'Elysium': This is your brain on robotics

It’s all fun and games until someone gets their exoskeleton bashed in.

In the futuristic, megabudget movie “Elysium,” which opens in theaters nationwide today, Matt Damon relies on an exoskeleton to keep him moving — and punching and shooting — even though his own body is failing him. The utopian orbiting space station and dystopian poverty of planet Earth is set in the year 2154, and certainly some of the science-fiction elements are at least that far away. Many others may never come to pass.

But the exoskeleton technology featured in the movie could be closer than we think, able to assist paraplegics as well as action heroes.

“It’s speculation on technology that does not exist,” said Charles Higgins, a researcher and professor of neuroscience at the University of Arizona. “But it could be used for someone who is paralyzed, and I think we’re actually making progress,” Higgins told FoxNews.com.

Higgins says it’s not fanciful to think that the first exoskeltons like those depicted in “Elysium” could be available in 50 to 100 years.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/08/12/16000-year-old-pa-rock-shelter/?intcmp=trending

The science of Sony's 'Elysium': This is your brain on robotics