‘Porton Man’ – the robot

Porton Man is a robot that is used to test protective clothing for the British military.

The makers of Porton Man used iglidur X plain bearings in all the robots joints; and this was for a very good reason…

Because Porton Man is used to test protective clothing against chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear substances, conventional ball bearings would fail quickly when faced with chemical agents such as mustard gas or sarin. However the high performance bearings of the X series wouldn’t due to the fact that they are completely resilient to chemicals and wear proof in temperature ranges of -100 to +250°C.

‘Porton Man’ was built by Crawley Creatures in Buckinghamshire.