Google may have a corner on the market of awesome, yet slightly terrifying, robots after having bought out Boston Dynamics, and it’s clear that they have little to no concern about our being scared stiff of their creations. Disney on the other hand seems bent on giving us a world of friendly and adorable robots to keep us off our guard.
“Wall-E” can now be seen as a long running propaganda campaign to make us comfortable with a world of cute little machines that we’ll never suspect. Enter Beachbot, a robotic turtle that’s as cute as it is impressive.
Using a laser scanner and a series of rake-like appendages coming out of its robo-posterior, Beachbot marks a canvas in beach sand and creates art by determining a trajectory and dropping parts of its rake to make lines in the sand.
At current Beachbot is limited to a canvas of ten meters by ten meters but according to Paul Beardsley, head of Disney Research Zurich, the team responsible for Beachbot, “The dream is to create huge amazing drawings like the Nazca Lines.”
The short term plan is to release Beachbot at public beaches to make temporary art installations for passersby. This marks a change in the intent of robotics in that Beachbot serves no real utility other than to create art and be just the cutest thing on gears.
That is until it reveals its true slow moving purpose…