Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/14/snatcher-a-superfast-robotic.html
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So, an electric tape measure? What will they think of next?
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Cunning… … … …very cunning… … … … … … … … … … …
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My kitchen has been inexplicably overrun with flies this week, so I’m already thinking of next… tape measure with fly paper and also a fly location sensor and some kinda gimbal.
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Snatcher, a superfast robotic tongue…
Okay, I’m twelve.
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Wow, it did that lickety split!
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So how is this a robot? It seems as much of a robot as a gun is a robot.
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Chameleons have forked tongues? I thought that was snakes. 
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I wonder why anyone would want a super fast tonguebot?
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Snatcher: a superfast robotic tongue
Snatch+tongue was far as I got and I was picturing a new kind of dildo.
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A solution in search of a problem. This is classic. Some engineer built something he thought was cool, then he had to do the hard part and try to come up with something that justified the time and expense.
Use it so a pickup drone doesn’t have to hover? That video clearly showed the test drone having to be slowly jockeyed down into position for this thing to work. Time savings = 0. A drone trying to pick up something can already do so using a device that has zero working parts - a hook. Put a ring on top of the item and fly the drone normally at a height low enough.
This thing can’t be feasible for anything that has a weight above a few grams. It works so fast, accelerating the package from a dead start will put enormous stress on the thing being picked up and could easily break it. And the shock of a significant mass being reeled up, when it hits the drone it could destabilize that and crash it. No, this is a toy and any serious engineer knows it.
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I’d use it for snatching Fedoras off hipsters
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They should have done a demo of it fetching someone’s Hitachi massager for them…
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I see that the question, “Uh, phrasing?” has been addressed.
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It is a toy now. Lasers were very expensive toys once. Okay, this isn’t a laser by a long chalk, but it might become something because they posted a video of it. I could imagine this picking up something light from a drone flying like an aircraft. Maybe something like crop inspection could use it to gather leaf sample or something?
Hey. Maybe it could catch locusts.
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I strongly disagree with the sentiment of this and smacks of a far too common mindset amongst engineers of assuming everyone else in the world are idiots who waste time on bad solutions to crap problems (and yes, I’m as guilty of this as the next engineer).
Establishing and experimenting with a new engineering approach is a valid and worthwhile thing for an academic engineer to be doing. It might never be used, but perhaps someone has a problem for which this would be the perfect solution. Who are you to say this is a toy? What you really mean is you lack the imagination to think of how this might be useful.
I suggest if you don’t have anything positive or useful to say, you say nothing at all.
As usual, I feel the philosophy of xkcd had something to offer here.
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This used to be considered a toy.
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Modesty forbids me to comment
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