What's cute, yellow, eats snow and poops out bricks of ice?
Meet Yuki-taro, a Japanese robot built to quickly clear roads after heavy snows.
The cute little guy, about 5 feet long and 2 and a half feet high, simply plows into snowbanks, taking in the white stuff, compressing it and neatly stacking it in two-foot-long bricks on his rear bed.
Created by a consortium of private companies, municipal governments and university researchers, Yuki-taro is equipped with two video cameras in his "eyes" as well as a GPS tracking system to be completely self-guided.
The prototype has already won a design award, and doctored photos of it modified to look like the popular Pokemon character Pikachu have popped up online.
This could come in handy in Norway if we actually had some snow.
What's cute, yellow, eats snow and poops out bricks of ice?
What likely costs ten times the price of a snow plough or grit spreader and will break down, be stolen or run over a pedestrian the second an engineer stops monitoring it? Not to mention it leaves blocks of ice behind it for people to trip over.
Get busy living or get busy dying... unless there’s cake.
Darth Tanner wrote: Not to mention it leaves blocks of ice behind it for people to trip over.
Ahem.
The cute little guy, about 5 feet long and 2 and a half feet high, simply plows into snowbanks, taking in the white stuff, compressing it and neatly stacking it in two-foot-long bricks on his rear bed.
HAIL ZOR!WE'LL BLOW UP THE OCEAN!
Heros of Cybertron-HAB-Keeper of the Vicious pit of Allosauruses-King Leighton-I, United Kingdom of Zoria: SD.net World/Tsar Mikhail-I of the Red Tsardom: SD.net Kingdoms WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE ON EARTH, ALL EARTH BREAKS LOOSE ON HELL Terran Sphere The Art of Zor
Oh alright, my mistake. But it can't be able to deal with much snow if it has to carry everything it scoops up.
Simple Darth Tanner, you simply build a million of then! Or even better you build a SECOND ROBOT, to unload the snow from it's hopper and stack them into snow castles for you.... or snow igloo's or something useful with all that roadway snow.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
Simple Darth Tanner, you simply build a million of then!
Don't you watch films! As soon as we build that many of them they will automatically revolt against us and enslave the human race to build massive snow machines to give purpose to their existance.
Wheres that snow they were predicting for today?
Or even better you build a SECOND ROBOT, to unload the snow from it's hopper and stack them into snow castles for you
So thats how surgicaly altered north korean generals can do that...
(Bond film in case no one gets it)
Get busy living or get busy dying... unless there’s cake.
Spin Echo wrote:This could come in handy in Norway if we actually had some snow.
There's no snow in Norway?
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Admiral Valdemar wrote:God, it's adorable. Can it do the same thing with humans?
I hate adorable robots. I want them to build a malevolent, scary-looking thing with flashing lights and a big warning plastered on the front: "Stay back or you will be stacked."
Admiral Valdemar wrote:God, it's adorable. Can it do the same thing with humans?
I hate adorable robots. I want them to build a malevolent, scary-looking thing with flashing lights and a big warning plastered on the front: "Stay back or you will be stacked."
Think of it as a tool for natural selection. Stupid humans will become cubes.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
Admiral Valdemar wrote:God, it's adorable. Can it do the same thing with humans?
I hate adorable robots. I want them to build a malevolent, scary-looking thing with flashing lights and a big warning plastered on the front: "Stay back or you will be stacked."
Heh. Off topic, but my dad's working on a device to kill weeds by injecting superheated/saturated steam at the roots, to cook them. By way of demonstration and warning, he'd use the probe to steam-cook some sausages for potential customers/users, then note that this steam would cook hands and arms as easily as it cooked sausages. I haven't seen it, but I imagine it would work quite well.
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Admiral Valdemar wrote:God, it's adorable. Can it do the same thing with humans?
I hate adorable robots. I want them to build a malevolent, scary-looking thing with flashing lights and a big warning plastered on the front: "Stay back or you will be stacked."
Think of it as a tool for natural selection. Stupid humans will become cubes.
... Companion Cubes?
sorry, I couldn't resist . Now, we need a 10 meter tall version that eats slush and shits good snow for ski slopes
Photography Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Actually, that reminds me of the evil robots in Terrahawks that were cubes which could form larger constructs together. Major Zero-One was my favourite though.
Admiral Valdemar wrote:God, it's adorable. Can it do the same thing with humans?
I hate adorable robots. I want them to build a malevolent, scary-looking thing with flashing lights and a big warning plastered on the front: "Stay back or you will be stacked."
People like cute things more than big nasty scary-looking things, generally...
Molyneux wrote:In a similar vein, this robot can eat you and reduce you to rectangular bricks.
Beware the snow-bots... >_>
I'd be more impressed if they painted a sharkmouth in it and rigged it up to have the snow blocks come out tinged with dark red. Add some food coloring to its mechanical innards to be injected into the ice, send it down the street and watch it leave behind red blocks, scaring pedestrians witless.
. Now, we need a 10 meter tall version that eats slush and shits good snow for ski slopes 
