Behold the New "Robot" Overlord!
Everything old is new! To hear Veritasium gushing about this "gamechanger" and "why has no one thought of it before" is both laudable and laughable. The only thing he doesn't (but should) compare it to is blow-in-place sewer drain pipe liners, because that might seem too low tech.
It's certainly interesting, of course, and potentially useful for some limited applications. But I wouldn't pull the plug on BoeBot and traditional mobile robots just yet. Some things the video doesn't mention or show well:
The tube is of fixed length and can only go so far. They show it moving forward seemingly forever. Once it's fully extended, it could POP and become useless if the pressure goes too high.
A high-volume, nonstop supply of air is required. Hardly negligible.
WRT the large bag lifting hundreds of pounds, this is nothing new. There were inflatable "jacks" to lift your car and change a tire inflated by your exhaust pipe nearly a hundred years ago. There is a fixed balance between volume and pressure, exactly like force and distance on a lever.
The tube is definitely fixed in place once it traverses that spike-filled enclosure, and air volume requirements increase with every puncture.
I'll stop now, I'm starting to sound like a cranky old curmudgeon. I just wish these young'uns (YOUTs) would acknowledge that they are merely tweaking a large, existing body of work.
Comments
Taking a term for the movie industry, technology re-imagined! I was thinking about how this could have helped the failed "mole" on Mars and voila, they actually mentioned how the re-imagined "vine" robot could have done the job.