Sorry, America – Iron Man is reality, he was built in Japan and not by Tony Stark either.

Hybrid Assistive Limb is by no means a new invention. 14 years in research and development this “cyborg-type robot that can expand and improve physical capability” has been around for almost five years now.

In the video footage making rounds in the net, the robotic suit that looks like some pieces of Star Wars Stormtrooper uniform fused with some funky Tron-type lights is worn by a normal man and enhancing his strength considerably.

Professor Sankai , the honored inventor of the suit and the leader of the development team claims the suit can make a human being at least five times stronger than he or she is capable of without it.

Genius as the engineers behind this exoskeleton may be, it sure sounds like they skipped a few marketing classes. The acronym and the market name for the contraption is HAL – reminder of the mutinous and murderous computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.

And guess what they decided to name their company? What better than Cyberdyne, another homicidal computing system responsible of the genocide of the most of humankind in TERMINATOR movies?

When visiting Japan, we tried to get one of these absolutely bashment exoskeletons for a little test drive, but no luck. Well, the next time around they will probably be more common and more widely available…

HAL facts