In a nod to this thread, I checked to see if I could find any defecating robots. And I am proud to give you the Pooping Duck Automaton.
More than 200 years ago, a French engineer designed it to eat and digest grains and then poop them out through a mechanical sphincter. (Note to self: “Mechanical Sphincter” for a band name.) Some people paid a week’s wages just to see it, and the engineer became a wealthy man. But it was actually a hoax, as the “poop” was really just some dyed-green breadcrumbs that was placed in a special chamber beforehand.
Fulfilling a promise made in an unrelated thread, here’s my “Poop Robots” thread.
Item 1: from 2011, the amazing dog-walking, poop-scooping robot, or “Perception Of Offensive Products and Sensorizied Control Of Object Pickup” (get it?), courtesy of our friends at the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania.
I read about that about twelve years ago, when it was exhibited in New York. I was amused to read that it was “fed” meals from top-end restaurants, every day at 11am. Also, its output was sealed in Plexiglas and sold. So it’s eating better than me, and its output is more highly prized than mine.
This was the first thing that popped into my head when I read the thread title. If they can bring the price down a little, (OK, about $398,800) they’ve got a customer. Actually, if they made it a backyard poop-Roomba, that would be perfect.
Malthus’ quote from my link: “Voltaire even mused that ‘without the shitting duck of Vaucanson, you will have nothing to remind you of the glory of France’.”
And the really funny thing is that this remains true to this day.
I’m not sure you can have too many Poop Robots threads.
