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points by conductr 4 days ago | 0 comments
My thoughts while watching the video

Robot picks up clothes -> this is stupid

Robot picks up kids toys -> this is brilliant

In reality though, I think the cables will never work in a household situation. It's a interesting concept and I'm sure it was fun to build :) Makes me wonder what commercial application this would work for, I'm sure there's something out there that would benefit from this over waiting on humanoid tech

[–] Karliss 4 days ago
Only widespread commercial application of cable robots I have seen is cameras in stadiums and concert venues.

I guess in most industrial use cases it makes more sense to have a robot stationary and move the parts around with conveyors. Doing it that way allows to pipeline and parallelize the manufacturing process. In contrast the large operating volume covered by cable robot needs to be served by single robot exclusively.

[–] daemonologist 4 days ago
I've always thought they could be good in agriculture (can't pipeline the ground, after all). Dealing with wind would probably require a ~fully constrained 6 line system though.
[–] defrost 4 days ago
"Agriculture" contains multitudes; here's an indoor pollination warehouse operation with pipeline tracks on the ground and no wind issues:

* https://costagroup.com.au/2022/07/06/world-first-robotic-pol...

  Australia's $900-million-a-year greenhouse tomato industry currently relies on farmers pollinating by hand
    “So we've managed to design a robot that pollinates greenhouse tomatoes.”
    “It autonomously drives along the rows, finds flowers that are ready for pollination using artificial intelligence, and sends air pulses to vibrate the flowers in a very specific manner to imitate buzz pollination as performed by bumblebees.”
* https://www.arugga.com/news/pollinating-robot-looking-to-sha...
[–] conductr 4 days ago
The MakerMade CNC machine is pretty interesting concept
[–] simon01 4 days ago
When I was 12, it was my job to pick up all the toys my much younger sibling had thrown around all house. I spent an hour every day doing that. I wish someone had gave something like this back then. It would save hundreds of hours
[–] bahmboo 4 days ago
It seemed like an hour it was probably 10 minutes!
[–] conductr 4 days ago
lol. I had much younger siblings too and have memories of pulling out the dust pan and broom if I had to clean after them. Luckily wasn’t my daily job, yikes!
[–] 3RTB297 4 days ago
It seems like it will work well if you know you have a situation that fits well with the setup. Do you spend 4+ hours out of the house and this is in a large, rectangular room with no one walking through? Perfect.

Two people have mentioned garden applications, so maybe back yard and outside applications are where the creator needs to explore.

Though, I agree that my spouse would rather burn the house down than set this up in the living room where cables would be "ugly" and not match with our decor.

[–] BorisMelnik 4 days ago
I'm thinking about the legos with chocolate milk spilled all over it, or the bowl of cereal sitting on top of the kids toys.

I wonder how it would handle something like a blanket or pillow on top of the toys

[–] nomel 4 days ago
A fourth cable would allow you to keep the other three constrained up high, with fourth being to lower. Would require some close looped control to eliminate swaying though.
[–] monk_grilla 3 days ago
My only problem with it is that it couldn't pick up things near larger things, right? Like a dog toy on the ground beside a couch, the cables would intersect with the couch. As far as I can see it would only work in relatively clear, low-furniture rooms, which severely limits its usefulness.
[–] rovr138 3 days ago
depends on the location of the sofa?

2 sides closer to the side of the couch would go lower than the other sides to reach the area?

[–] monk_grilla 3 days ago
It would have to be against the wall basically to not cause a problem right? You couldn't reach anything that is between a large object and the wall, because the lines would hit the object
[–] d--b 4 days ago
Same here I had a 3rd step in my thinking though:

Robot can't open ikea drawers -> this is not gonna work

[–] tootie 4 days ago
For $800 I think it's pretty incredible. If something like this is plausible then you may see a future version built with rails.