The idea of possessing superhuman strength is a Hollywood staple. It is also a dream that audiences can’t seem to get enough of – witness the £300m-worth of tickets sold worldwide for Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr, over the summer. But while Iron Man’s rocket boots and built-in “repulsor rays” so far remain on the drawing board, a powered exoskeleton able to multiply its user’s strength tenfold has just become a reality.

Earlier this month, in a little noticed ceremony in Japan, the world’s first fully functioning robotic exoskeleton was launched. It is called the Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) system and will endow the wearer with abilities and strength he or she could previously only have dreamt of. As the scientists said at the launch – we are now officially in the age of the cyborg.

HAL was developed by a Japanese company called Cyberdyne, but despite the science-fiction baggage that comes with both of those names – Hal is the killer computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Cyberdyne is the corporation behind the computer that starts a nuclear war in the Terminator movies – the suit is unlikely to go on the rampage. It moves only when you want it to move.

It works by using sensors applied to the skin that detect the faint electrical currents sent by the brain through the nervous system when it commands a particular activity. These sensors are connected to a computer that interprets the signal and then sends its own command to electric leg and arm braces. Upon detection of the appropriate electrical nerve signal, HAL moves a split-second before the leg muscle itself.

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The upper-body component enhances arm strength, as demonstrated by a slim Cyberdyne staffer who effortlessly held in his arms three sacks of rice weighing a combined 90lb. The suit is calibrated to the user’s natural strength, so that weaker users will get more of an assist. Two years ago, a prototype version showed its real-world benefits when a mountaineer wearing HAL carried a quadriplegic man on his back close to the summit of 13,661ft Mount Breithorn in Switzerland.

Cyberdyne intends to rent out up to 500 lower-body versions of HAL a year, at a cost of about £1,300 a month, and has teamed up with companies in Japan and Holland to lease the technology. Designed as a rehabilitation tool, HAL will bring mobility and strength to elderly and physically handicapped people. The technology could also have industrial and military applications. No decision appears to have been made on the availability of upper-body units.

“Automobiles have been around for a century, but HAL is just beginning,” says Cyberdyne chief executive Yoshi-yuki Sankai. He began research on HAL in 1992 and unveiled his first prototype in 1998. “Unlike cars, HAL wasn’t developed in a one-sided fashion, but by incorporating the views of many people, including end-users,” he says.

Cyberdyne isn’t the only company seduced by the idea of enhancing man’s physical capabilities. The US army is in the early stages of testing an aluminium exoskeleton made by a company called Sarcos, owned by Raytheon, a defence contractor. It aims to improve soldiers’ strength and endurance and a prototype was demonstrated earlier this year, although unlike the full HAL suit, which weighs 51lb, the military version is 150lb, limiting body movement and battery life.

Some technology visionaries see HAL as just the start. “An exoskeleton is a baby step towards telepresence – technology that enables a human to feel and sense as if they were really somewhere else,” says Hans Moravec, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who has been building robots since the early 1960s. “This would mean making direct use of the operator’s multiple senses, but without the cost of putting that operator in the location of highest risk.”

So where does cyborg science go from here? So-called “transhumanists” such as the American inventor Ray Kurzweil claim that our frail, biological bodies will soon become outmoded, as the contents of our minds are digitised and backed up on computers. We will live for ever in cyberspace, occasionally down-loading ourselves to a choice of machines to interact with the real world. But that is in the future.

Now to get started on those rocket boots.

HOW HAL WORKS

1. Electric motors provide power for the upper limbs

2. The computer control unit, which processes nerve signals detected by the skin sensors (see 4) and sends commands to the exoskeleton

3. Battery pack, holding enough power for 2hr 40min of activity

4. Bioelectric signal sensors against the skin pick up faint nerve impulses to the arms and legs that are translated into commands for the exoskeleton

5. Electric motors for lower limbs

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