The uniform would do all of this while standing ready to constrict automatically into a tourniquet, detoxify chemical agents or treat a wound. The Army wants to make such a seemingly sci-fi device a wartime reality over the coming decades using nanoscience - the manipulation of the atomic world - to create ultra-tiny devices.
The U.S. Army Natick Research and Development Center is evolving the combat fatigues of yore into a protective suit that also is an integrated network of tiny computers, sensors, power generators and communications devices. The current manifestation - a "high-speed combat uniform" - is known as Scorpion, said Cheryl Stewardson, a Natick physical scientist.
Though still in its early stages, Stewardson said Scorpion eventually could contain ultra-small sensors that form "a physiological status system measuring heart rate, core temperature, skin temperature and work rate." It could communicate that information to medics through a built-in antenna that conforms to body shape, "allowing them to remotely assess which casualties on a battlefield should be treated first," she said. It might also render first aid.
"We are looking at integrating combat causality care technologies into the suit," she said. "We're very early in that thought process, but it's possible to imagine it administering blood coagulants or anti-bacterial agents for instance."
The suit also could sense heavy blood flow then form a tourniquet by swelling and tightening around a wound.
"We don't know if nanotechnology could take us there," she said. "We don't know where nanotechnology will take us, but we are looking at it from a multifunctional perspective."
Nanotechnologists admit the developmental challenges are daunting. For starters, physical principles are sometimes different in the atomic world. Even if those differences are understood, mass-producing devices composed of nanosized elements - nano means billionth, so one nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter - could prove difficult.
There have been strides, however, such as carbon nanotubes that are electrically conductive, ultra-hard tubes of some 60 carbon atoms. They are being produced on a relatively small industrial scale and scientists like Zhifeng Ren, a physicist at Boston College, are spinning them into ultra-tough fibers for Scorpion.
Ren has evenly dispersed nanotubes into a mixture, itself a major developmental hurdle, and has spun them into ultra-tough fibers 20 microns small. A micron is a millionth of a meter.
"We have managed to create fibers in which the nanotubes are well-aligned," he told United Press International.
Military officials seem confident nanoscience will bring lighter, stronger armor, and Stewardson said nanoparticles currently used in sunscreen might also be woven into fabric to capture and detoxify chemical agents. Nanoparticles embedded in a face shield could protect against lasers while light-emitting particles could cause the suit to change colors to match the environment.
The uniform also would generate and store power "using conductive nanocomposites acting as solar conducting devices," Stewardson said. "We want to couple that with a flexible storage device, also a nonmaterial, so you have energy generation and storage in a flexible and conformable device."
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
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