A real-world Iron Man

In the course of checking out some new photos from next summer's Iron Man 2 movie, I was reminded of the fact that military contractors are working on real-life exoskeletons. While these things are a far cry from Tony Stark's flying, repulsor-shooting armour, they are pretty damn impressive.

I've mentioned Lockheed Martin's Human Universal Load Carrier - which is of course known as "HULC" - before, as well as the efforts of Japanese car makers' to create robotic legs that can be worn by people.

It was Raytheon, however, that got attention when the first Iron Man movie came out in 2008 for working on the real thing. A number of media outlets had stories on it while Wired did a nifty video. Check it out - a real-world Iron Man in action: