Are you fascinated by the ocean? But at the same time, it terrifies you? Do you have trouble clearing your ears on descent, and fear the bends? Dear friends, Nuytco has you covered. That's the company founded by deep sea exploration pioneer and genius visionary, Phil Nuytten.
Inventor of the JIM suit in the late 60s, then the Newt Suit (what most people picture when they think of atmospheric diving exoskeletons) as well as the Deep Worker line of one and two man utility submersibles, Phil Nuytten is perhaps the only man alive who is more obsessed with putting human beings in the ocean than I am.
The JIM suit realized a very old dream of divers: The ability to work at depth as long as they liked without fear of nitrogen dissolving into their blood, requiring lengthy decompression. As you can see it was a bit clunky, as expected for 1960s technology.
The JIM suit enjoyed a successful career, but was replaced by the Newt Suit in the 1990s (seen above). It too enjoyed extensive use by the oil and gas industry, as well as being the focus of a documentary about aquanauts and dolphins. There was also a grey Navy variant used for clandestine deep sea military operations.
Never content to rest on his laurels, Phil recently completed and deployed the next generation replacement for the Newt Suit: The Exosuit. Bigger, badder, cooler looking. It was utilized on a mission to explore a shipwreck where the Antikythera Mechanism was first located. Subsequent dives are also planned, in search of more pieces of this mysterious ancient machine.
Like the JIM Suit and Newt Suit before it, the Exosuit is a one atmosphere diving exoskeleton. It's like a submersible that you wear. This allows you to dive to depths of up to a thousand feet with no change to the pressure inside the suit. This means no decompression is needed.
The Newt Suit features lower resistance joints than prior models, allowing for easier, less strenuous movement. It has its own set of battery powered thrusters, and the diver is kept comfortable by internal heaters and air conditioners integrated into the rebreather.
Although currently standard pincers are used, Phil has been hard at work perfecting a new type of mechatronic hand for the exosuit with an opposable thumb and two fingers. It's a difficult engineering problem to solve as the mechanism must pass through the pressure hull without compromising it.
This is deep sea exploration in safety, comfort and style. What do you have to fear from sharks when you can punch them in the face with a mechatronic titanium fist? Greetings from land, motherfucker. Their ancestors used to eat ours for breakfast, so don't feel too bad.
The Exosuit, while more ergonomic and comfortable for divers, actually falls short of its predecessor in some ways. Both have 48+ hours of backup life support, but the Newt Suit can be used at twice the depth of the exosuit. It remains to be seen whether comfort will defeat utility considerations for organizations looking to buy a 1 atm diving solution.
As for Phil? He has his own ideas about the ideal use case for the Exosuit:
Truly a man after my own heart. That's all for now, stay tuned for subsequent installments.
...and Stay Cozy!