Ricky Robot's Snacky Wants to Feed You Popcorn — and Succeeds About Half of the Time
"I'm thinking of using it for gaming or even driving," Snacky's creator claims. "Maybe not driving."
Pseudonymous maker Ricky Robot has built a robot arm designed to automate the process of eating popcorn — by searching for an open mouth using a wide-angle camera.
"This is Snacky, my newest robot. It feeds humans a variety of small snacks such as popcorn, which is the easiest, nuts, or grapes," Ricky explains. "It works the best with things that are circular shaped."
"It detects snacks, grabs one randomly, searches for an open mouth, inserts the payload, then repeats that on a loop ad infinitum — or until I press escape."
While primarily an educational experiment which, Ricky admits, "works about half of the time," Snacky has already proven useful. "This is great for me because if I'm coding and want to snack I can keep my hands clean and my keyboard clean and I don't have to look away from the screen," he explains. "I'm thinking of using it for gaming or even driving.
"Maybe not driving."
Ricky is already designing a second iteration of Snacky which would improve its safety, increase its accuracy, and "look better." More details are available on his YouTube channel.
