Lockheed Martin ONYX

Not soldDeveloped under a $6.9 million US Army (NSRDEC) agreement awarded in November 2018; never offered for sale.

Not for sale (research)Buttons onlyKnee exoskeleton~9 kg with batteryAI controllerArmy prototype

Not for saleNever sold. ONYX is a military research prototype developed for the US Army and is not available to companies or the public. Lockheed Martin press release ↗

Control: Not possible. A military prototype with no public interface.

Lockheed Martin press release ↗UCF Pegasus inside look ↗Exoskeleton Index ↗

Overview

ONYX is a powered knee exoskeleton that Lockheed Martin built for soldiers, using dermoskeleton technology licensed from Canada's B-Temia. Knee actuators, sensors at the feet, knees and hips, and a waist-worn AI control unit assist the legs when climbing, squatting, kneeling or carrying heavy loads, and the system weighs about 9 kg with its battery. The US Army's Natick center awarded a $6.9 million development agreement in November 2018 and the suit was tested in field exercises, with Popular Science naming it one of 2018's best new products. It was still a prototype in 2019, not yet sealed against water, sand or dust, and it was never sold. Lockheed's earlier hydraulic HULC, licensed from Berkeley Bionics (now Ekso), was dropped after Army tests found it hindered movement. The Army also funded the Dephy ExoBoot ankle exoskeleton for similar load-carriage work.

Specifications

Category	Exoskeletons & exosuits · Full-body, military & research
Released	2018
Country	USA
Availability	Not for sale (research)
Programmability	No programmability
Built-in autonomy	Reactive · Responds to its surroundings without a map, such as avoiding obstacles or following a person
LLM support	None · No voice assistant or LLM.
Vision sensors	No vision sensors
Actuators	Brushless / direct-drive motors
Audio	No audio
Compute type	Proprietary / undisclosed
Control	Buttons only
Weight	~9 kg (20 lb) with battery
Assistance	Electro-mechanical knee actuators add power when climbing, squatting, kneeling and carrying loads; in one trial a wearer managed 72 squats holding an 84 kg (185 lb) load against about 25 without it, and a University of Michigan study found lower energy use climbing inclines with a 18 kg (40 lb) pack.
Joints	Knees
Battery & runtime	External battery packs, about 8 hours with two batteries and up to 16 hours with four (unconfirmed).
Operation	Automatic. An AI controller in a waist-mounted module predicts the wearer's next move from body sensors and drives the knee motors, with about 150 ms response time in 2019.
Sensors	Sensors at the feet, knees and hips feeding a waist-worn control module.
Compute	Waist-mounted control module with an AI motion predictor (chip not published)
SDK	None