Retail giant Lowe’s imagines a day when hardware store employees will walk up and down aisles in robot-style suits, making it possible to move heavy boxes with ease.
It was an idea first hatched by a team of science fiction writers the company enlisted to come up with a far-fetched vision of the future. Then Virginia Tech researcher Alan Asbeck was the one tasked with making it a reality.
“It’s the intersection of what’s futuristic and what’s possible to do now,” Asbeck said of the so-called exosuit his team came up with.
The mechanical engineer spent about a year on the project before handing over prototypes to employees at the Christiansburg Lowe’s store last month. Five workers who stock shelves when the store is closed at night volunteered to be part of the experiment, though Asbeck didn’t provide details on how many hours each worker is actually spending in the device.
