3D Printer Hacked Into Sandwich Making Robot

Sandwiches: what would I do without them? Probably starve, or at least go hungry for lunch. Well, now mechanical engineer Yuto Kuroki of Meiji University in Tokyo has made the entire sandwich-making process easier, thanks to a 3D printer that’s been modded into a 3-axis robotic manipulator. Extra cheese, please!

The robot is capable of picking up and placing a piece of bread, picking up and adding meat, slicing and dispersing cucumber, then adding a top piece of bread and cutting the whole sandwich in half. Unfortunately not diagonally, making the sandwich almost inedible as far as I’m concerned.

I particularly liked how the robot regularly detaches and attaches a different functional head to its arm depending on its current task (e.g. picking something up, cutting, etc.). That’s a clever design. Now it just needs mustard and mayonnaise squirting capabilities and I won’t have to beg my mom to make my lunch for me every morning, although I will miss the encouraging handwritten notes.

[via BoingBoing]

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