Koolio, the Beer Delivery Robot

Ipingforpong writes "Recently a University of Florida engineering student named Brian Pietrodangelo built a mini fridge named Koolio that when you place an order through the website, will deliver a cold soda, beer, or various candy to you. Right now it's only available in one building at University of Florida but soon it could catch on in office buildings and other places."

Comments

This is a convenience?

[OmegaGeek]

From the description:

"Imagine watching a movie with someone and you get thirsty. It is an inconvenience to everyone watching the movie to stop the movie, but at the same time you don't want to miss anything important. Koolio could solve your problem."

Right. So instead of taking 30 seconds to get to the fridge and back, I'll pull out my laptop, login to the robot control server, place my order, then wait for the bot to get my drink to me; at best this takes 2 minutes

Its a cool idea, I'll admit, but maybe not the most practical. Especially since when I launch my browser to login to the robot server, my home page is /. and it takes me 20 minutes to read and comment on new stories. Now, where was that work I actually meant to be doing right now...

Re:Oh boy..

[LostCluster]

that's gotta be one hot piece of hardware. I'd bet it'd be hard to keep thieves at bay.

This thing would never survive in a dorm environment. The payload will always be stolen, and it'd be constantly knocked over by people who just want to be jerks.

However it might work just fine within a "friendly" office environment...

Re:You can laugh...

[Phenris Wolfe]

That happens because the geek approaches the situation from a scarcity mentality. A woman can't do that to you if you're willing/able to walk away if it gets to be too much crap.

That being said, it took me a long time to figure that out, so I can understand the depression thing as well.