What would Megatron say to transforming beer can?
The three-legged CanBot, a transforming can of Kirin from Japan, is more than meets the eye.
(Credit:
Video screenshot by Tim Hornyak/CNET)
There's a happy summertime relationship between robots and beer, usually centering on the former being engineered to serve the latter.
We've seen robot beer butlers, robots that can check for leftover beer, and machines that track drinks.
One hobbyist in Japan, though, is determined to bring the relationship one step further. He hacked a can of Kirin so it transforms into a walking robot.
The CanBot, as YouTube user Longjie0723 calls it, sits innocently on a table, looking like an ordinary can of suds. Until someone pushes a button on a Wiimote that transforms it into a mini robot.
CanBot has three legs, each with two servos, and can shimmy around on a tabletop or roll on its side. The prototype runs on an mbed microcontroller and four AA batteries.
As seen in the video below, it isn't good for much except impressing kids. And even that's tough. Kids these days!
Actually, the can isn't even beer. It's a 500-ml can of Kirin Tanrei, a low-malt, beer-like beverage known as "happoshu" in Japan. Since it has less malt than real beer, the tax on it is lower and it's cheaper. But I digress.
Longjie clearly has his partying and robot priorities straight, having filmed himself getting a robot arm to put food into his mouth (and failing) while quaffing his Kirin and making a Roomba birthday cake for his 2-year-old son.
Let's raise a can to geek dads!
(Via Singularity Hub)
