But it is not going to happen anytime soon without a major breakthrough in battery technology. I don't know much about battery technology except that I keep hearing the challenges are tremendous. I dream of the little walnut sized atomic power plants Asimov described in the Foundation books.

From the article:

"Before the technology can become practical, the developers must overcome cost barriers and extend the suit's battery life. Jameson was tethered to power cords during his demonstration because the current battery lasts just 30 minutes."

The same sort of breakthrough is needed for not-powered-by-gasoline cars, so it's not like it's not a being-worked-on problem. :) This seems like a good application for fuel cells, actually, given that the energy density is five or ten times that of the best chemical batteries.

Well, they don't specify what kind of 'press' (bench, leg, drill, coffee?), but I'll assume they mean 'bench', and for an 'athletic' 5'11" guy at 180lbs, not being able to bench 200 is... surprising. Anybody can, with a bit of training, bench 10% above their body weight.

I know that this isn't the point of the article -- I'm just being nitpicky. I definitely think that the tech is interesting, but I think that it will end up finding many more uses in the civilian world than it will in the military. A reliable, self-powered exoskeleton would make for a lot of changes in the building trades, in the way warehouses are managed, in the way factories operate...

We live in interesting times. :)

It says he's "lucky if he can press 200 pounds" unassisted, which means he presses 200 lbs on a good day. Which, as you say, is pretty normal. I'm not sure what you're surprised about, unless you're misinterpreting the phrase "lucky if".

I was going to go into this field, until I saw this really good documentary as a teenager, which made me realize how dangerous this technology is.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/

battery limitations are the show stoppers on every cool piece of technology I've seen for the last few years. :(

it's one of the fundamental engineering challenges of humanity. how do we store energy more efficiently?

Now we can "liberate" even more countries!

Robotic suits not make soldiers super.

Well, every time we've tried radiation, all we've done is given soldiers the super powers of 'getting cancer' and 'dying', so I'm kind of happy that they're going for more the 'Batman' and 'Iron Man' approach. :)

Master Chief?