A Handful of Lowe's Employees Have a New Work Uniform: An Exoskeleton

Haha, watch out for those cheap Chinese knockoffs....

Real slimming.

Do the cheap batteries also catch fire?

I bet ones like this could never crack a peanut.

GM: that is not the peanut cracking suit. Please do try to stay up with the thread.

The peanut cracking suit has an attachment for that. You should see the Brazil nut cracker attachment, and the Black Walnut attachment.

The suit pictured is for cracking nut like you.

I know. Looks like crab on steroids, though. You should have one, but dont put batteries on it.

Now you are just being mean. Do you always stick your head in the toilet every morning and flush it?

It is the way of the future, and has serious benefits where a forklift is just not that practical (like in a public access store aisle where forklifts are a safety concern, or just plain too big.

Don't dare put this glorified weight lifting belt in the same category as a forklift!? .. then again.. I'd sooner call a forklift a wheeled exoskeleton than call this a wearable one.

Who wouldn't want to work somewhere where you can wear an exoskeleton?

Ummmn let me think a second..

Not I.

Put me in one like (or better) than the yellow bug above and then we can talk pay.. like I'd pay to work in the thing.. the other one? Not so much.

Lowe's.. lowest on the list of home improvement centers​.. even though it's closer than hoe doe n Menards.

They should really look at what's on the shelves and make it contractor friendly before they waste another nickel on gee wiz crap that won't impact or impress the customers.

(Can you tell how much I love my local Lowe's)

Your missing the point, these things have to be field tested somewhere and if a Lowe's employee can operate it......

Seriously thou, no one said fork lift replacement. There are a number of fields where a person with augmented strength would work faster and safer than say a standard person in a vehicle, or a robot.

If anything, this is potentially putting MORE jobs back into the workforce (in certain areas only I admit) for semi-skilled people instead of giving them to automated robotics or doing them less efficiently (ie-more costly = less competitively).

That's a good thing right?

Good thing?

If so it would do well in the rental department. Being a high performance carbon fiber super tool and all. Correct?

.. disclaimers aside..

I think it would rent as well as a set of divining rods.

It seems to me that strain and the resulting pain is a message from your body that you're working above your current abilities. Suppression of pain may create a new long term strain issue elsewhere?

That said I hope the things work half as well as they look silly.

That, that said I will offer move a pallet of concrete anytime they want to lab rat me into the program.

Brainwaves my hoot. I'd be singing from the roof trusses if it made a nice difference in how I felt. l can still shoulder two bags if I need and I will carry two sheets of drywall.. or 6(2x6x10's)etc. so yes. I'm a good candidate.

Have you not been following the news over the years on this technology? It is starting to make inroads in both medical mobility aids and specialist military applications. Stock movement and construction are logical steps forward.

panasonic-robot-suit-exoskeleton

I have and I'm as impressed at how much money has been spent.

The Panasonic device is still unavailable, but when it is? It will weigh probably 15 pounds and give users the bionic lifting force of 15kg! At only $8K+

I don't think you'll get the job at UPS or anywhere if you showed up to your interview wearing the thing and boasting it's specs. Maybe a laugh, but not a job.

I've seen plenty of the medical and military versions. there is merit.

Not a lot, but there is a little. It's a heck of a way to over complicate things.

Sadly the medical devices I've seen that give a person "the dignity to stand again" lack anything resembling dignity. You can't strap Steven H. into and upright mobility suit and send him off shopping. It just won't work that way.. If you could, it would turn into a spectacle with the public Gawking.

Leave the lifting for the capable persons and equipment designed to do so. It's much quicker, and far more cost effective.

The Lowe's exoskeleton seems about as high tech as a fiberglass tent pole. Calling it an exoskeleton seems more like hype than anything.

Take a look at this one.. (not sold/hyped as an exoskeleton)... This goofy looking apparatus is the closest relative to the thing Lowe's is asking you to believe is an exoskeleton of heroic standard to be envied and worshiped by all. ( OK I made that part up) .. they are trying to make a back brace cool by changing its description to something that it's not..

.....this guy in the picture below.. They guy holding the tree in his hand is strapped into a serious exoskeleton. (by MY definition)

Bare in mind that the technology is really still in the early stages and like most developments is quite limited to begin with. It's really only started to push ahead thanks to battery development in my opinion.

Yes, ignore sloppy product marketing, that doesn't count.

Transistors, computers, mobile phones and flight for example all suffered from the same teething problems. Remember the first mobile phones?

They probably should stock a few on their shelves for the public.... ^{Maybe Home Depot would be interested in it.}

I know when I purchased over 100 80lbs bags of cement.... to save a few buck over the 60 lb bags...

after thinking about it, the down side,... I had to be careful so I didn't hurt myself, or the summer would be shot... with the cement in my garage. Where this may help... if it wasn't too expensive....

The up side of not having it,... I lost 10 lbs from the work out as well as having more mobility even being sore from the work out.

I think one could do without,.. and just work smarter. But hey,... I don't do it for a living... thank god.

Somebody's gonna get censored for that....

I like that snappy uniform, and WonderWoman was always one of my all-time favorite fems.

Does it (the uniform) make those bed springy sounds like the ones on Seven Million Dollar Man made? Or like someone was playing the harp on the garage door springs again?

Almost all cars have power steering, power brakes, and power windows. Almost everyone uses power tools to increase their productivity and reduce their effort. To me, this is just another power tool. I don't see a downside.

Reminds me of Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) 'gear' in the original ALIEN movie.

I think that was the second Alien movie.

Shouldn't the title of this post read 'A Gripper-Full of Lowe's Employees'?

Oh wait. It does.

"Lowe's has had the exosuit-wearing employees also wear a headset for a few hours of their shifts. The headset senses brain activity to determine whether they're enjoying the experience. Nel said it's a far superior way to get user feedback versus asking direct questions."

--In other news, Lowes employees will be compelled to wear the headset the entire shift, so that moods may be altered by the new brain wave injector thought control process, still in the laboratory. The current level of progress is a bit dodgy, and usually results in laboratory researchers being excessively conversational and talkative to the extreme. Bits of work still get done on a daily basis, in spite of the set-back.

-- an update from fake quake braking news shocker HQ. Next week we will stop braking the news, and put the pedal to the metal, and will truly report the breaking fake news items of keen interest on the day.

Reporting the news before it happens since 2018

.. who knew Lowe's was behind the fake news explosion?

Load should be palatalize and handle with side loader. lifting and placing each load manually will be back breaking job.

If the new suit sounds like something found in a science fiction novel, there’s a reason. The idea evolved in the company's disruptive technology hub, Lowe's Innovation Lab. One concept within the hub’s narrative-driven approach is the ability of the design team to work with science fiction writers to envision the future and use storytelling as inspiration for innovative initiatives. The Lab envisioned a future where the use of technology could provide special “superpowers” to Lowes employees and maximize performance.