Whale, There’s Sand Robots Now…
If you were stranded on a deserted island, what would you bring with you? A book? Maybe a cell phone? How about a robot that can write in the sand for you? Sounds pretty helpful! Ivan Miranda, a creator and Youtuber from Spain, has constructed a “printing” robot towrite messages in sand at the beach! So next time you are stranded on a deserted island, don’t waste your energy writing SOS in the sand with a stick. Use this super handy robot!
The Design
The structure of the robot is similar to how a CNC router works. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s basically a cutting machine controlled by computers. This sand robot consists one large bar, elevated off the sand by wheels on each end. The long bar acts as a linear actuator and holds the carriage, a slider, which moves up and down to write messages. The slider has a notch which drops down to make a series of vertical dashes in the sand where the program tells it to. As the robot creates the dashes, the robot drives horizontally, so that the two axes of motion are perpendicular to each other. Over time, the dashes begin to form very large letters in the sand!
No more messages in bottles!
There’s no denying that this robot is extremely slow. In the video Miranda posted of the robot on the beach, each clip is highly sped up. So, this may not be the best method of signaling a message to plane flying over your deserted island in a rush. But if you are organized and schedule out your emergency notifications to planes at least an hour in advance, then this is your product.
Unfortunately, windy days and high tide pretty much ruin the sand message as it is written, but you could be like Tom Hanks in “Cast Away” screaming at your sand robot that was just scooped up by the ocean tide. WILSON, I’m sorry! We recommend keeping your sand robot away from the water, so you don’t risk recreating one of the most iconic scenes in all of cinematic history. That would be quite tragic, and you would have to go back to the drawing board, but with a stick.
So, why build a sand robot? Because you can. No one is going to stop you. And some news outlets believe that this robot could be breaking through as a new form of advertisement on beaches. Picture this, you are surfing those blue waves and staring directly at an advertisement for Tide Bleach and Kellogg’s® Cereal on the shore. Simply beautiful.
Sand robots are cool, not very high tech and mostly pointless. But if you’re wanting to get a nice drone shot of a cute message for a significant other without the hassle of writing it yourself, then this is your product! This robot is cool for SHORE!
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