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An Australian company has developed a modern suit of body armour that is packed with sensors to measure the impact of martial arts weapons on the body. The company hopes to build an entertainment property around real fights between martial arts experts wearing the Iron Man-esque suits.

The Sydney-based company -- Unified Weapons Master (UWM) -- worked with engineers to develop the armour, which is designed to protect the body but also register the impact of every strike. The aim is to create a score system based around the damage that would have been inflicted on players if they hadn't been wearing the armour.


Cofounder Justin Forsell has been thinking about the idea since 1998. He had trained around the world to instructor level in various martial arts, spending time training at the Buddhai Sawan Sword Fencing Institute in Bangkok, learning traditional weapons-based fighting called krabi krabong.

Gallery: Smart armour will determine most badass martial artist Gallery Gallery: Smart armour will determine most badass martial artist + 4

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"The instructors and students were highly athletic and incredibly skilled, but they had no forum in which to compete," UWM CEO David Pysden explains to Wired.co.uk. "He felt that many of these arts are slowly becoming lost and no-one really appreciated their incredible abilities."

The vision is to create a forum where weapons-based practitioners can compete in their chosen martial art in a full combat situation with high levels of safety


Forsell's vision was to create "a forum where weapons-based practitioners can compete in their chosen art in a full combat situation and to objectively know the outcome, but with high levels of safety". Thus UWM was conceived.

Over the last four years, the founders have been working on the concept, spending the last two years developing prototype suits of armour. These have been tested by martial arts experts including World Muay Thai Champion Sone Vannathy, who has fought against a sparring partner dressed in the armour. "I can kick him, punch him wherever I want without worrying about the safety," Vannathy explains in a video.

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The armour has been built by a team that has experience in building armour and weapons for films such as The Lord of the Rings. It is made from strong, but light and flexible plates that are packed with sensors. These measure not only the location of any impact, but the force. This data is sent wirelessly to a computer where software which draws on medical research then calculates the damage that would have been inflicted on an unprotected body. This allows for a videogame-like scoring system that tracks damage to competitors. After a certain number of blows, a player will be knocked out or killed.

Pysden won't be drawn into more detail than this about how exactly the suits work. He told us, "The technology behind the armour is proprietary and confidential," adding that, "it uses a combination of different force measurement and other technologies, custom software, advanced impact materials and medical research".

The startup is now looking for further capital to realise its vision. "One strategy we are pursuing is the launch of our membership programme through our website. The next step is to produce production versions of the armour and software, suitable for competition and broadcast television, and to hold our first events," Pysden says.


Ultimately, he adds, UWM is about "preserving, honouring and reigniting weapons martial arts".

He explains that of the 303 distinct styles of martial arts, 96 are weapons based. "Until now, because of the risk of serious injury, many of them can't be practiced in a full-combat situation.

We are going to change that by creating a format that unifies these arts into a single competition where the winner is determined objectively using our patented combination of technologies."