Aside from the (admittedly considerable) appeal of watching Robert Downey Jr. crack wise as billionaire genius-turned-superhero Tony Stark, perhaps the biggest lure of Marvel's Iron Man movies is finding out just what kind of amazing toys and gadgets he's built into the latest version of his high-tech armor this time around. Although such innovations as a costume that unfolds itself from a suitcase onto your body (Iron Man 2's "Mark V" armor) or clothes that follow you around when you wear special bracelets (Marvel's The Avengers's Mark VII armor) remain the stuff of science fiction, a surprising amount of the tech on display in the Iron Man mythos has counterparts in our world, even if the reality is a bit less colorful and unlikely to help us in the case of a Chitauri invasion. From strength-enhancing exoskeletons to repulsor rays and sentient robot sidekicks, becoming a real-life Iron Man wouldn't be easy -- and it definitely wouldn't be cheap -- but it wouldn't be entirely outside the realm of possibility, either. Above: Arc Reactor No matter how nice Tony’s toys are, without a power source, he’s basically stuck with some very colorful plate mail. Enter the arc reactor. Arc reactor technology is the core of both Stark Industries’ business and Iron Man’s suit: a miniature cold-fusion reactor. While there’s no real-world analogue to this technology, Marvel.com suggests that the arc reactor’s technological roots might lie with the Tokmak, a Cold-War-era experimental fusion reactor first developed in the Soviet Union. Like the arc reactor, the Tokmak generates phenomenal power output. Both reactors are donut-shaped, and both incorporate magnetic fields and plasma. Tokmaks are much, much larger than the arc reactor--even the larger model at Stark Industries – and still considered highly experimental as energy sources. But given Tony’s particular genius for miniaturizing complex designs, they’re the most likely real-world ancestor to the fictional arc reactor. According to Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the issue of designing a fist-sized power source is less of generation than of storage and potential side effects. For the best bang for your buck (and minimal burn damage), DeGrasse Tyson recommends a different sort of power source: one based around controlled matter-antimatter reactions. –Rachel Edidin Photo: WikiCommons

Repulsor Ray Glove The "repulsor ray" glove is one of Tony Stark's most-used weapons, but something that you might not have considered someone would actually try and build in real life. Of course, that line of thinking doesn't take hardcore Iron Man fans into consideration. One such fan, a German lab technician called Patrick Priebe, took a break from his day job of refining polymers to build himself the closest thing to a real repulsor glove: A hand-mounted laser. The laser, which runs on lithium-ion batteries, may not quite have the destructive qualities of Iron Man's glove rays, but that doesn't mean that it's harmless; it emits a 1,000 milliwatt ray, which is roughly 200 times stronger than the lasers normally permitted for U.S. consumer usage (In other words, this isn't something that you'd want to use to screw with your cat, unless by "screw with," you actually meant "potentially burn"). Not content with that achievement, Priebe went one stage further and built what he calls a "functional Iron Man Laser Gauntlet", complete with pop-up laser. – Graeme McMillan Photo: Patrick Priebe

Jet Pack According to Iron Man lore, the hero manages to fly thanks to powerful jets in his boots, which propel him through the air without managing to either (a) burn his feet or (b) require him to wear platform heels that would suggest a superheroic glam rock revival. Here in the real world, there aren't any jet boots that can help you soar through the air, but there is the next best thing: the personal jetpack. Personal jetpacks have actually been around for years; the first design came in 1919 from Russian inventor Aleksandr Fyodorvich Andreyev, but it wasn't until 1960 that the first jetpack made its public debut in the shape of the Bell Rocketbelt. Unfortunately, the high cost and low flight time of the device meant that excitement around the invention faded quickly. The dream isn't dead, however; New Zealand-based company Martin Aircraft has developed the Martin Jetpack, a personal jetpack with a gasoline-fueled engine that can stay in the air up to 30 minutes at a time, for the consumer market. Some estimates suggest a price around $1,000,000 as a minimum, but hey, no one ever said being a real-life Tony Stark would a low-cost enterprise. – Graeme McMillan Photo courtesy Martin Jetpack

Military Exoskeleton DARPA (The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has been working on the development of exoskeletons to improve the physical performance of U.S. soldiers for more than a decade, and in 2010, defense contractor Raytheon unveiled one of the results of that development for the first time: The XOS 2 exoskeleton. Although intended primarily for use in the logistics support area, the suit significantly enhances strength, allowing wearers to punch through three inches of wood with ease. Inbuilt hydraulics handle the majority of the strain, even counter-acting the effects of the wearer's own movements, leaving the user able to do the work of three men, while lightweight materials and construction leave the wearer as maneuverable as they would be without wearing a massive piece of military hardware. There's a catch, of course; each suit requires the user to be connected via cables and other tethers to a central control panel. With the tethered version scheduled to be rolled out in the field in 2015, Raytheon are reportedly developing an untethered version of the suit for future use. –Graeme McMillan Photo courtesy Raytheon

Medical Exoskeleton Exoskeletons aren't just being used in military environments, of course. Outside the theater of war, the same basic technology has been harnessed to help people regain the ability to walk and train their muscles to start working again. Indeed, [Ekso Bionics](<a href=), one of the leaders in the medical exoskeleton field, have shared their tech with Lockheed Martin for use in the military field. Like the military exoskeleton, medical devices seek to assist the body in terms of strength, but they also help wearers' muscles relearn activities and exercise and strengthen them in the process. There may not be as much punching of wooden blocks or lifting of dangerous (and heavy) missiles, but medical exoskeletons have helped people to walk again after many had written off the possibility, and that is, let's face it, far more impressive. – Graeme McMillan Photo courtesy Ekso Bionics

Mind-Controlled Computers If the idea that Tony Stark could somehow control an entire suit of high-tech armor just by thinking really hard seemed entirely unrealistic to you, then you might be surprised to know that there already exists technology that allows someone to control a computer system with their mind. Developed by Samsung's Emerging Technology Lab in conjunction with Roozbeh Jafari, the assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas, Dallas, and intended for users with mobility issues, the experimental system lets users control an adapted Samsung Galaxy tablet device without touch or vocal commands, thanks to a skull cap fitted with EEG-monitoring electrodes that can tell where you're looking and what you're concentrating on. Admittedly, this technology isn't quite at the stage where you could write an email with it, never mind control a complicated war machine while also bantering about international cuisine with a thunder god - So far, it's limited to allowing users to select a command from a limited menu of options - but it's definitely a start. – Graeme McMillan Photo courtesy Samsung Research Lab

Heads-Up Display Watching scenes in the Iron Man movie where Tony Stark is inside the armor and we see screens popping up to give him information as needed, two thoughts might have occurred to you. #1: That looks amazingly overwhelming. #2: Why can't I have that anyway? Of course, now we know that you can. It isn't the idea of glasses that can take photographs that makes Google Glass feel like Iron Man technology, but the idea of an Internet-enabled wearable computer than responds to voice commands and offers information that only the wearer can see. Admittedly, it'd be nice to imagine that you could do more with this than merely search photos, start Google + hangouts or look up map or weather information, but even with the tech that exists in the real world, it's clear that this is a first step on a road that will eventually lead to a full-face helmet that allows you to fight crime and Instagram yourself doing so simultaneously. And, really, isn't that what being a superhero is all about? – Graeme McMillan Photo courtesy Google

J.A.R.V.I.S. Smart homes have been the stuff of wistful (or scary) science fiction for ages, but with advances in wireless networks--as well as data-mining and artificial intelligence--systems like Tony Stark’s J.A.R.V.I.S. are rapidly approaching science fact. According to Dr. Diane Cook of Washington State University’s school of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, the key to a smart habitat is ambient intelligence: the ability to seek and interpret information and then autonomously act on it. You might already have some basic forms of that technology in your own home: does your heat or A/C kick on or off depending on the air temperature? How about an automatic defrost cycle on your refrigerator? While J.A.R.V.I.S. is Tony’s lab assistant, Cook’s research into smart homes focuses on a different function: she’s studying ways that ambient intelligence can allow senior citizens to live independently for longer. – Rachel Edidin Photo courtesy Marvel Studios