[HN Gopher] Pipe Inspection Robot [video]
___________________________________________________________________
Pipe Inspection Robot [video]
Author : got-any-grapes
Score : 58 points
Date : 2023-04-11 16:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Now that I've actually clicked it, I really want to know why this
| is in the top of HN. Like others have said, this is a generic,
| synthesized-voice video produced about something simple and not
| very innovative that looks like a dog toy that has been battered
| over years by a playful dog. Why is this on the front page?
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| Watched it without sound.. seems that removes a lot of this
| negative impression which I did not have at all.
| dang wrote:
| We put it in the second-chance pool
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), so it got a
| random placement on the lower part of HN's front page. Perhaps
| we shouldn't have?
|
| The upvotes after that are all organic though.
| neom wrote:
| Personally I think it's great for two reasons, the tech is
| actually cool and, it's an example of "weird instagram spam"
| that actually isn't. Thanks for giving it a second chance!
| neom wrote:
| Probably giving it the benefit of the doubt, as we're supposed
| to do on HN. If you watch the whole thing and get past the
| typical instagram spam synth voice and general weirdness, the
| tech actually seems pretty cool... Personally, I can't think of
| a better solution to the problems they're proposing to solve.
| enguinq123 wrote:
| Why does it look like a sex toy
| knodi123 wrote:
| And why does this Rorschach guy keep publishing dirty pictures
| of my mother?
| nullcaution wrote:
| Its definitely neat, but not sure how practical it is against
| traditional pressure/vacuum?
|
| The Oil Industry has a big lead in this tech, but maybe this
| would be useful in domestic applications like drainage?
| luma wrote:
| Oil and gas use pipe "pigs" which date back to pulling a bale
| of hay tied to a wire through the pipe to clean things out.
| Apparently they made a squeeling sound and the name Pipe Pig
| stuck. More details on modern pigging:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigging
| zubiaur wrote:
| They use smart pigs to inspect pipelines too. They are
| awesome looking machines:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmJ083afaYY
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| One of the most memorable company names I have ever heard,
| memorable enough that 30 years later, I still remember that
| their phone number is 1-800-HOT-HOGS is the New Pig
| Corporation. I occasionally see their products on city
| streets.
|
| They make oil-spill containment barriers and cleanup
| equipment and until your comment, I had no idea where the
| name came from. Now I wonder if there's a connection...
|
| Second most memorable, at least the phone number, is
| 1-800-ROBOHAND (robot end effectors). I think they are now a
| part of Schunk Corp.
| tmporter wrote:
| I did find it strange that in most of the footage the pipes
| seemed to be tightly sealed with screws, adhesive, and in some
| cases what looked to be foam. It makes me wonder if there was
| some sort of vacuum required for this demo.
| ai-apocalypse wrote:
| It's another youtube vid with the weird script and voiceover that
| sound AI generated. I can't watch more than a few seconds of
| those - it really feels like I am ingesting some artificial and
| inedible brain food.
| smlacy wrote:
| Almost like these are videos coming straight out of the Dead
| Internet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
| zwieback wrote:
| creepy and awesome
| neom wrote:
| Lot of people understandably pissing on this. I did some
| research: Seems like Tadakuma Lab at Yamagata University in Japan
| have a group at their Uni helping them market their ideas to
| western audiences. If you dig in a little bit, it seems pretty
| legit, and the tech is interesting. They focus on novel
| mechanical movement systems for robots:
| https://www.researchgate.net/lab/Tadakuma-Laboratory-Riichir...
| // https://twitter.com/garagefolks/status/1599224023640342528
|
| Unfortunately, I'm not sure they realize their marketing come
| across like spam.
| diabolique_2 wrote:
| [dead]
| alexb_ wrote:
| Am I crazy, or was this video also pushed to the top of HN a
| couple days ago? Something smells about this.
| smlacy wrote:
| What's with this kind of "Technical Innovation" video?
| Synthesized voiceover, royalty-free upbeat stock music
| background, myriad of grammatical and factual errors, over-hypes
| a fairly simple device, clearly developed/produced outside of the
| U.S. but is targeting an English-speaking audience.
|
| I understand the "looking for funding" aspect of this, but if you
| can't get simple grammatical errors fixed, or honestly, if you
| can't afford to higher quality voiceover talent for your
| promotional video, then it just makes the product seem like a
| scam. Its fascinating that the producers of this device and video
| don't realize how bad this kind of thing could make them look.
|
| There was lot of talk of "spherical gear" in the intro to the
| video, but as best as I could tell, the robot itself didn't use a
| spherical gear at all.
| elil17 wrote:
| I do not think this video was made by the lab that invented
| this. I couldn't find where they got the video clips from, but
| I did find a video about an earlier iteration of a cilia-based
| pipe robot from the same lab:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGJXTUZbbWA
|
| I believe the spherical gear is used to move the "elephant
| head."
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's unclear to me if this is an offshoot from that
| university lab trying to get interest in commercialization of
| their tech or if it's a content mill setup looking to cash in
| on this obscure-ish Japanese research lab's robots.
|
| I could believe either and the kind of production fits either
| to me.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| These are made by bots or low paid foreign labor (and probably
| soon AI if not already) and spammed at places like Reddit/HN
| for a) karma farming to make accounts look "legit" for
| advertising use b) ad view revenue. It's basically the same
| business model as SEO-ified blogspam.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I think this is what you get when material scientists have just
| a few hours to produce a video, and have no knowledge of video
| editing software.
| dylan604 wrote:
| content producer is probably not native speaker of the
| language? also, isn't this a trendy thing to do on TikTok?
| smlacy wrote:
| ...Where low effort content reigns supreme I guess.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I mean, they just gave you a demo on a robot that wiggles
| around inside of a pipe with all sorts of 3D generated
| content. if that's low effort content in your book...
| [deleted]
| readicculus wrote:
| What happens if the battery dies or other technical issue is what
| I want to know
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| I guess the digestive tract has a way of removing things over
| time..
| amelius wrote:
| What we really need is pipes with peristaltic movement.
| knodi123 wrote:
| That's okay, there's a pipe inspection robot removal robot. If
| you're wondering how it would work, then an unsatisfactory
| answer is "spherical gears".
| bastard_op wrote:
| Looks suitable for application in Teledildonics.
| mhb wrote:
| Through how much pipe can it travel on a charge? A few tens of
| feet? If it needs a tether, isn't a borescope a better
| alternative?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-12 23:02 UTC)