Originally published at: Robot uses oversize chopsticks to move boxes around | Boing Boing
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That double-bladed kill-bot is making a mockery of “this was up” instructions!
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It never starts as a murder-bot…
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I don’t think it can handle boxes that say “This end up”?
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Can I order 2 of them? My bar could definitely use an oversized Rock’em Sock’em Jenga game.
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I doubt chopsticks would make much difference in this case.
From the video:
DX-1 can pick items of almost any size, even in unorganized situations, faster than any other solution."
Look I’m all for automation, robots crushing production jobs and the disruption to blue collar jobs that it brings…but faster? I’ve worked jobs like that in my younger days and I’m pretty sure even unstacking random boxes for +8 hours a day I’d be faster than that. I’d like to see that setup compete on a shipping dock unloading non-palletized shipping containers. In the productions environments I’ve worked robots either are able to do the job of +3 people or are doing things people can’t.
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Or even “this way up”! 
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He’s called “Drumwright”? Those are drumsticks not chopsticks.
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Careful editing removed the bit where the small box fell between the rollers – and the robot shrugged.
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Does anyone know how the amount of pressure required would compare with other grip options?
I’m absolutely unqualified to do the actual physics; but my impression of using chopsticks vs. other implements is that they spend a lot of time not supporting the bottom of food items where some deformation at two small strips of contact is acceptable.
That seems like a questionable fit for something like assorted boxes; where you are typically encouraged to lift from underneath or from specified handle cut outs(but not too deep, since those cut outs circumvent the padding and lead right to the product, like some kind of packaging eyeball leading to the brain, if you shove something too far in) and where corrugated cardboard or the harder closed cell foams are never the same again after the first crush.
I can definitely see the attractiveness of not trying to emulate hands, that’s a ton of complexity; or deal with an entire catalog of application-specific manipulators; but the amount of force, over a limited area, required to get a good grip seems like it would be an issue.
Am I overestimating how much force we are looking at here; or underestimating what a box can take?
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never mind… which way is up… some of those boxeses are looking e.m.p.t.y.
here…
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This is suggesting a 2-person chopstick game to me. It should definitely include the step where you flip things upside down.
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… emulating hands might be hard, but once they got it right they could use them for everything, like many other now-ubiquitous technologies 
Some of those boxes look on the verge of deformation. Anyone who packs their boxes improperly, without enough fillers, is gonna get crushed.
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