Meet Yuki-Taro. He’s a little robot who was developed by the Hokkaido Regional Development Bureau, and unveiled to the world at the Aichi Expo in 2005. He also poops ice bricks like a little snow WALL-E. He’s my new best friend. We’re going to be very happy together.
Built in cooperation with New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) and the Engineering Department at Yamagata University, this little guy is guided by a GPS sensor and twin cameras in his “eyes” to detect potential obstacles in his path—like the snow that falls regularly in Niigata, Japan, where the researchers who invented Yuki-Taro are reportedly from. It then compresses the snow that it takes into its front shovel into 28.5 pound bricks, and can carry up to 220 pounds of snow-bricks on its rear deck.
Unfortunately, even if you could afford the 1 million yen (or $9000) price tag, it’s probably unlikely that you’ll ever be able to give one of these bots a forever home pooping igloo building materials onto your front driveway for you. Although Yuki-Taro won the Good Design award in 2006 and there was hope that a commercially available version of the plow would hit the market in the next five years, it appears that there haven’t been any investors interested in producing the robot on a larger scale.
Poor Taro. He’s like the last snowbender. WE STILL LOVE YOU, SNOWPLOW BUDDY. Let’s go mess with some otter penguins or something!
(via Laughing Squid)
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