Mar.08.2007 Wow that robot sure throws beer
Hey drunken lazy fatsos (and really, when does this combination of adjectives and nouns not apply/work well in tandem)…your chariot awaits.
It took 22-year-old [James] Cornwell about 150 hours and $400 in parts to modify a mini-fridge common to many college dorm rooms into the beer-tossing contraption, which can launch 10 cans of beer from its magazine before needing a reload.
With a click of the remote, fashioned from a car’s keyless entry device, a small elevator inside the refrigerator lifts a beer can through a hole and loads it into the fridge’s catapult arm.
A second click fires the device, tossing the beer up to 20 feet — “far enough to get to the couch,” he said.
Let’s say this were mass-produced for a fraction of the cost…then sold at market value, probably about $200-300 dollars. Is it really worth that to have a machine throwing beer at you, possibly at decent velocity, when you could probably get up and get it yourself? And what if it isn’t aimed properly and it breaks your TV or hits your baby in the head? Isn’t it enough that your baby has a father with a beer machine and probably a drinking problem? Does it have to get pelted in the head too?
When Cornwell was a student at Duke — an elite, private university in Durham — he participated in the engineering school’s robotic basketball contests, said mechanical engineering Professor Bob Kielb. He said students tried to build a robot that could retrieve a pingpong ball and toss it into a small hoop.
“He always did well in it,” Kielb said. “He came up with completely unique ideas.”
Completely unique ideas like “Throw the beer to the guy” and “Throw the ball into the hoop.” Cornwell also worked on a military device that would throw grenades. He also worked on a machine that would play catch…only the throwing part and not the catching portion of the festivities though. Some may call Cornwell an engineer. I prefer to call him Mr. Uncreative Fancy Catapult Man.
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