A Japanese snowplow that “eats” snow and “poops” snow/ice bricks! This could come in very handy in my cul-de-sac, which always seems to get snowed in after the bigger snow storms.
————
What’s cute, yellow, eats snow and poops out bricks of ice?
Meet Yuki-taro, a Japanese robot built to quickly clear roads after heavy snows.
The cute little guy, about 5 feet long and 2 and a half feet high, simply plows into snowbanks, taking in the white stuff, compressing it and neatly stacking it in two-foot-long bricks on his rear bed.
Created by a consortium of private companies, municipal governments and university researchers, Yuki-taro is equipped with two video cameras in his “eyes” as well as a GPS tracking system to be completely self-guided.
The prototype has already won a design award, and doctored photos of it modified to look like the popular Pokemon character Pikachu have popped up online.