New Scientist Technology - Bionic suit offers wearers super-strength

New Scientist Technology - Bionic suit offers wearers super-strength: "A ROBOT suit has been developed that could help older people or those with disabilities to walk or lift heavy objects.
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Two control systems interact to help the wearer stand, walk and climb stairs. A 'bio-cybernic' system uses bioelectric sensors attached to the skin on the legs to monitor signals transmitted from the brain to the muscles. It can do this because when someone intends to stand or walk, the nerve signal to the muscles generates a detectable electric current on the skin's surface. These currents are picked up by the sensors and sent to the computer, which translates the nerve signals into signals of its own for controlling electric motors at the hips and knees of the exoskeleton. It takes a fraction of a second for the motors to respond accordingly, and in fact they respond fractionally faster to the original signal from the brain than the wearer's muscles do."

Steve's Commentary
This is really exciting for the obvious medical and military potential of a bionic suit. What I find most fascinating is that our movement is telegraphed by an electric current on our skin's surface before our muscles actually respond. Even more incredibly, we have the technology to detect it. (I wonder if this is the same mechanism that allows schools of fish to move in sync?) I wonder what a "smart environment" could do if it could detect your movements before they took actually place? Perhaps these signals could be detected to initiate control of a personal avatar in a virtual reality system or an augmented reality system (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/augmented-reality.htm).