Pipe Inspection Robot [video] | Hacker News Reader

Pipe Inspection Robot [video]

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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.

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?

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.

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!

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.

Watched it without sound.. seems that removes a lot of this negative impression which I did not have at all.

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.

Almost like these are videos coming straight out of the Dead Internet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

People watch it, so there's money to be made.

This isn't new either. There are plenty of TV channels that run 24/7 "documentaries" of similar quality.

content producer is probably not native speaker of the language? also, isn't this a trendy thing to do on TikTok?

...Where low effort content reigns supreme I guess.

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...

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?

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

They use smart pigs to inspect pipelines too. They are awesome looking machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmJ083afaYY

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.

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.

Am I crazy, or was this video also pushed to the top of HN a couple days ago? Something smells about this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35543937

What happens if the battery dies or other technical issue is what I want to know

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".

I guess the digestive tract has a way of removing things over time..

What we really need is pipes with peristaltic movement.

as long as they don't also glisten or ooze.

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?

Why does it look like a sex toy

And why does this Rorschach guy keep publishing dirty pictures of my mother?

creepy and awesome

Looks suitable for application in Teledildonics.

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