I think something along the lines of an augmented powered exoskeleton, or passive ones…

fieldtexcases.com/…/medical-military-applications…

… could plausibly upscale into basically Power Armor… and you could maybe also upscale them into basically forklift with legs that you wear, from the loading bay in Alien…

I think those kinds of things are certainly within the realm of plausibility… presuming the power source can be made actually usefully efficient.

You can be a kind of up armored and up armed soldier, you can lift heavy shit, carry it a really long way, across broken terrain (that can support the weight).

Pair these with an active defense system, and they might actually be reasonable useful in certain scenarios.

Its kinda like how just saying ‘drones’ is reductive… different sizes, scales, carrying capacities / payloads, ranges, speeds, methods of communication, propulsion systems, power sources … create a huge spectrum of different types and niches.

We have humanoid robots that can do bipedal locomotion pretty fucking well, without a pilot.

youtube.com/watch?v=vW3QoaPnDGA

Pair a similar kind of software with something closer to a suit, strapped around a human, all it has to do is translate human motions to the scale of the suit, do intelligent stabilizing, kinda like how modern aircraft controls are fly by wire, not pure analog.