(Photo courtesy of the Berkeley Human Engineering Laboratory.)

Behold the BLEEX!

Referred to in long-form as the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton, this DARPA-funded Ellen Ripley hydraulic couturier will allow soldiers, combat engineers and civilian techno-sartorialists to carry hundreds of pounds (potentially more) with little physical effort.

According to a press release:

Such a machine could become an invaluable tool for anyone who needs to travel long distances by foot with a heavy load. The exoskeleton could eventually be used by army medics to carry injured soldiers off a battlefield, firefighters to haul their gear up dozens of flights of stairs to put out a high-rise blaze, or rescue workers to bring in food and first-aid supplies to areas where vehicles cannot enter.

Of course, the BLEEX could also allow a lone landscape architect to carry a shed worth of tools, a truckload of hardscaping material or the entire inventory of an arboretum. With added appendages for the upper extremities, he might even carry an entire garden straight from the factory to an awaiting backyard.


(Photo courtesy of the Berkeley Human Engineering Laboratory.)

It's the Jardinator© miniaturized and exoskeletonized.

With just a small army of highly trained migrant workers, you could overlay an interstate highway or landscape a dozen Central Parks in a day. Or a bed of mums in one picosecond.

This is the future of guerrilla gardening. You get suited up with the Bleex, and with your night vision goggles, satellite navigation systems and weaponized hoe, you set about re-wilding urban concrete wastelands. Under the cover of darkness, a squadron of Bleex Soldier-Gardeners armed with prairie grasses and wildflowers carries out sabotage on Wal-Mart parking lots.

In the Archives:
Animaris geneticus, or: Intergalactic planetary landscape architect

Future Tense:
The Return of the Intergalactic Planetary Landscape Architect

(Spotted at Gizmodo.)