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The Beer Tossing Fridge
cmacdona101 writes "CNN is reporting on a recent Duke grad that's engineered a remote controlled Fridge that tosses him a beer at the touch of a button. The fridge can launch the beer up to 20 feet, far enough to get to his couch. The video shows the fridge using a "beer magazine clip" and a remote firing system that let you determine angles and ballistics to get the beer to your friends anywhere in the room."
Time for a divorce.
Funnypics
The fridge can launch the beer up to 20 feet, far enough to get to his couch.
He'll have to wait a couple of minutes for the beer to settle before opening it when using his system. A smart boozer would realize that it would take only ~20 seconds to walk to the fridge, get two beers and return to the couch with half of one beer chugged by the time he returned.
Damn rookies... The Alcohol Lifestyle isn't just fun & sloth, it's also about using your time effectively!
Trolling is a art,
this reminds me of the killer soda machine in maximum overdrive...and i believe theo huxtable had something similar when he and his friends moved off campus and into their own apartment...
That's DEFINITELY a Duke grad. He is, in fact, the epitome of all Duke grads, the Duke grad all Duke students would like to emulate most closely in their lives. Isn't it just the most wonderful educational institution in the world?
ResidntGeek
Better hope the users comply with the ethical treatment of robots codes. It could like that evil 7up machine that Jamie built if it feels violated...
http://wstewart.php0h.com - the sugarbuzz project blog
I invented the Pabstapult, which makes for a nice explosion when the can explodes. It wasn't connected to my fridge and wasn't fully robotic, so kudos!
Man, you really need that seminar!
I saw this a few weeks ago and thought it was the best thing ever, until i thought about it a little. no good beer comes in cans (well bodington's is OK i suppose). it could be dangerous/messy with bottles. and it would shake the beer up (or at the very least disturb the yeast on the bottom)... so i'll pass, getting you beer is what women are for anyway.
What, this thing can't toss a midget? What a rip!!
end politicallyIncorrect
And what's the point of building a fridge, a robot, a beer, or a couch if they aren't running linux, they aren't ethernet enabled, and they don't have a Web 2.0 interface?!?!
The Widget of Sticky
AKA, The Adhesive Gadget
Now all he needs is a couch with a built in toilet and he'll be all set...
I put a tap right next to the couch.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You cradle the bottle gently and pour it carefully into a pre-wetted glass at a 45 degree angle. Tut tut... Americans...
Deleted
Joe had programmed Sploosh to respond to requests of "barley pop" by pitching one over.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Anything that can toss a beer 20 feet is hazardous to the TV, dog, kid, Xbox, and the beer itself. Granted it's a funny thing to have put together, it would have made more sense to use those 150 hours on moving beer from the fridge to the couch over a lifetime.
I like basketball!!1!
But, is it 3 laws safe?
Life is a Game. Play to Win.
Just saw that the inventor has a page on its history and mechanics , plus lots of great pics.
with a new client.
Talk about awkward.
They had it posted on YouTube, and a student I was mentoring for FIRST Robotics had sent me the link. I was laughing so hard that I didn't hear them walk into the room on an un-official tour. When they came to my spot I had to recover, so I pointed out that this was what a student wanted to do for his robot (I am SO going to burn in hell) and that I had to figure out a way to dissuade them.
Fortunately, I recognized the client (and they me) so they joined right in on the fun.
I'll give'em credit tho- anyone that can put a beer spot on the money like that deserves what happens when they drink Bud.
Bar Fridge. Rocket surgery strikes again.
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
Now all we need is something that lets you type with *both* hands and collects all those piles of kleenex!
C|N>K
It only handles cans.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
A good improvement would be to put some spin on the beer as it leaves the arm, thereby flinging it in a tight spiral as opposed to end-over-end. 5 revolutions per second should be good.
As for how to prevent the beer shower that follows... I haven't come up with something for that yet.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Forward: Soon, Americans Will Lack The Need To Move
Need? More like ability: this is obviously the next evolutionary step for our species. Why do we need these legs anyway? All they do is make me need to buy pants!
Back: Miller Light? In a fucking can?
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
In the Accuracy Test, loading of the first beer into the throwing arm takes about five seconds. After that, it fires each subsequent beer in just over a second. Obviously it's not pivoting around and getting each next beer out of the magazine. Presumably someone is manually loading the throwing arm after the first beer.
A Very Cool Device, but I think the accuracy test is a bit of a cheat.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
You really have to see it in action! I found the video on metacafe.com that was mentioned in the article.
_ launching_refrigerator/
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/445498/robotic_beer
thown to you by your Rube Goldberg device, are you going to rape some Duke sorority girls?
P.S.: Slashdot has about 6 months before it goes off-line. Have you noticed the number of posts to its stories declining rapidly?
Yours drunkingly,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.
Bah, wake me up when there's a salad tossing fridge.
But if you can't catch the beer you've reached your limit... and a black eye courtesy conveniently flying beer.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
i'm used to all the "but this was on digg!!!!1!1! /. is teh SuX0r!1one"
but damn..... slashdot got scooped on a robot story by Deadspin. a sports website. over a week ago. AND had to wait until CNN picked it up.
y'all are slippin, i tells ya.
The IRS is the one organization that you don't want to fuck with. Remember, these are the guys who took down Al Capone.
This reminds me of the vending machine that Jamie of Mythbuster fame built for a 7-Up advertisment, http://www.m5industries.com/html/portfolio/7up.htm
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Rubber floors
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
"Robobuddy, go fetch me a beer. And could you pour it into one of the mugs in the freezer?"
"I'm sorry Sir, the First Law forbids me from harming a human, and alcohol is known to destroy brain cells and cause liver damage."
"Damn you, worthless piece of junk, can't even fetch a beer. Fine, I'll get it mysel--AAAGH! Holy hell! Why'd you punch me?!"
"I'm sorry, Sir, the First Law forbids me to allow through inaction a human to be harmed, even if the harm is self-inflicted."
"But you fucking punched me! That violates the First Law doesn't it!"
"I'm sorry, Sir, but the long term harm of your life of alcohol consumption outweighed the short term harm of preventing you from reaching the fridge. My circuits register deep regret that the action was necessary."
"Whatever, roboasshole. Can you at least grab me a Coke?"
"I'm sorry, Sir, but the First Law forbids me from harming a human, and high fructose corn syrup is a known cause of diabetes."
"I suppose that a meat lovers pizza with extra cheese is right out, then, too."
"Yes Sir. Sorry Sir. Also don't think you can sneak out to the pub without me knowing, Sir."
"Oh god, I'm in hell..."
The enemies of Democracy are
The first improvement will be to make it voice activated.
Hey, Bitch. Toss me a cold one!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This has a potential to blow the Wiimote classaction lawsuit away :).
Today: Hey, Mom. I just put my beer through the Big Screen. Buy me another one.
He is from Duke, right?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
... tossing your beer is only the start. Next, get it to toss its cookies.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Step 1: Create novel idea /., then watch the money roll in (advertising revenue sharing)...
Step 2: Build it
Step 3: Film it, and post video on metacafe.com
Step 4: Submit story to
I knew CNN had sunk pretty low, but enough to call a machine that throws cold drink cans 20 feet is a news item?! What is this, Fox News Channel?!
fellow duke student Gerald Henderson threw a vicious elbow at the device during a routine beer launch.
It's testing the accuracy of the throwing mechanism, not the ease at which you can aim it. The test shows that once the machine is aimed, it will reliably hit the same spot repeatedly. You wouldn't want a beer throwing machine that sprays the beer in random directions.
I, for one, welcome our new beer-tossing overlords!
Beer tossing fridge is great but I think a better one could selects several items like hot dogs, chips, etc. The hot dogs would like something from Costco, prepackaged with bun in a plastic bag and microwave ready, and the system puts it out from the fridge to the microwave and then throws to you. The chips will just dump from a dispenser since chips don't need an serious preparation.
I could see Jabba the Hut sitting on the couch not moving except to go to the potty... but I have seen some of those don't get up got that.
I've gotta change the font in my RSS widget I almost missed an important technological milestone.
Although, a bear tossing fridge would be good for protecting food from Yogi and BooBoo.
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
...would not have a button to launch the beer, but a hose.
Inside the hose would be a flow sensor and an alcohol sensor. Couch potato would request a drink by blowing into the hose for a few seconds.
Once the breath flow is detected, the controller would measure the breath alcohol. If the person's breath alcohol reading is within the legal driving limit, the machine would flash a green light, and toss the person a beer. Otherwise, it would flash a red light, then toss them a non-alcoholic drink.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Finally, something useful to patent!
This should be tagged lazy fuckwit.
Is it really that burdensome to walk to the fridge?
Next you'll be telling me that his couch has a built in comode.
Jeez.
I looked through the links to find that phrase, but I didn't see it anywhere. It sounds like Southern Redundancy, but I can't trace it to Duke. Call me a pill, but wouldn't you get your Irish up if you saw "RAM memory", or "CPU processor" in an otherwise really neat article? I know I would! And I'm not even Ann Coulter. Honest.
Hurrah! Finally a piece of technology the average Australian man can use and understand! Now, if we just had an longdrop armchair...
I voted this up 2 days ago!!! Why does /. need "editors" anymore?
I didn't see a motorized door over the hole the beer is raised out of the fridge through. Wouldn't this waste a lot of power keeping the fridge cold and cause it to frost up really fast?
If you take the Monticello tour, they point out the little mini dumb-waiter that brought wine up from the cellar. Of course, there was no remote control. He just told his slaves what to bring up, and then they presumeably operated the mechanism with a hand-crank or something. It's been a long time since I took that tour.
This robot has a couple obvious flaws. First, the arm has to rotate to get into firing position. He should have the beer elevator on the other side. Next the beers shouldn't have to ride the eleveator. It should be more like a sprung rifle magazine, so that there is always one beer right by the "chamber", ready to be loaded and fired. These two changes alone should increase his firing rate considerably. The first time you get a beer from this thing it's fun, but once you realize what a painfully slow rate of fire it has, the novelty will wear off.
It's a cool robot though. Way better than I could do, I'm sure.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Since beer comes in six packs, any system that is not loaded in multiples of six is seriously flawed. Makes as much sense as buying a package of ten weiners and a package of either eight or twelve buns..
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Why is this article full of links to blog spam, when the video itself says the true url: http://www.beerlauncher.com/ ? Save yourself the blog spam and just go there directly. Slashdot, please stop being like digg.
with the technology. Let me know when he makes a garbage catching can.
LRN 2 SWM
Yeah right, like you went to Yale, Harvard, or MIT.
First the fridge tosses, then the drinker.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Although Hebrew National are definitely my favorite tasting hot dog, their 7-in-a-pack thing screws it up even more.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
it is better.
f etching+dog&search=Search
Beer fetching dogs:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=beer+
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity....Calvin
Since when did the phrase "made more sense" have anything to do with a good hack?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I think the dangers of drinking are enough that dodging drafts need not be added to the list.
sometimes, nothing.
I first read that as 'crotch'.
That wouldn't be a good thing, even if it was a beer.
Max.
Hey, shouldn't the magazine size be base 6? If I only have a six-pack, I'm wasting capacity, and if I have a twelve-pack, I've got to get up to reload. Then again, I guess you can reload while you're unloading.
There's gotta be a WKRP reference somewhere in here to be had ... the machine gets *faster* at tossing 'em the more Johnny drinks?
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
FAT CUNT
Seriously if it did, it would have all things it would take to be the perfect /. article. It's like the perfect storm in /. beer tech.
The Gospel according to lolcat
The guy may have misunderstood the term :-)
Insert
the downfall of this contraption isn't in the delivery, the real issue here is that he has to get up and reload after every tenth beer
Considering how well beer opens after being shaken, I'd say this engineer has a limitied understanding of Physics.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Beer tosses you!
0x7279727972797279
And here i am thinking i got the news first with slashdot, i got this two weeks ago in my mail.
Is the kid planning on selling his invention to pay for law school? That way he can sue all the owners for accidents and retire his first year outa law school????
maybe he should re-invent paintball - use tequila instead of paint.
... a beowolf cluster of beer throwing machines!
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About CNN:
Trolled
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