Turns out This Massive Robot Arm Is Not Cut out for Writing 2000 Christmas Cards
We love terrible robots and robo-fails, and no one knows those two things better than YouTube creator Simone Giertz. Robot fails give us some comfort that we're able to laugh for now at our robot overlords, and that laughter only increases with videos like these.
"I don't know if it will be good, but it will definitely be something," Giertz said.
She puts together an industrial-grade Kuka robot arm in order to churn out 2,000 'handwritten' Christmas cards. That's a $100,000 piece of machinery being used for one of the most time-consuming tasks of the holiday season. Rather than intentionally prime this robot for failure (as she's done in previous videos) Giertz gives this robot a legitimate shot.
"This is the first time I'm attempting to build a robotics project that actually works," Giertz noted with a laugh. "It's weird."
However, the Kuka arm is better suited for larger activities like helping to build cars or stack pallets in a warehouse. The arm (and thus the robot) just wasn't quite up to the challenge of personalized holiday cards.
The Kuka couldn't exactly write legibly enough to send out those cards. "This is just going to be one very long signature," Gierz said.
It's odd to watch a YouTube creator so known for intentionally failed robotics to want to see this project succeed, but it's just as entertaining as the rest of her robo-fail videos.