Ascending Aggies is a team from Utah State University who recently won first prize out of 33 teams in the Air Force’s contest to get four soldiers over a very tall wall. They developed what they call a PVAC, or Personal Vacuum Assisted Climber, a very loud vacuum strapped to your back connects to two suction cups and lets you climb pretty much anything, even if the surface wouldn’t have been so good for regular suctions cups.
The device is still in the development stages, but the work they’ve done so far is impressive enough that the Air Force coughed up $100,000 to let them keep working on it. Watch the demo video below.