Robotic Lego ball contraption to beat them all

Akiyuky on YouTube has uploaded a 7 minuted video overview of her or his astounding Lego Ball Contraption, a robotic rube goldberg device in 17 modules, each more fiendishly clever than the last. The accompanying blog (in Japanese) has lots more detail. But honestly, you can just sit agog for seven glorious minutes and soak it all up without having to try and parse out Google Translate's rendition of Akiyuky's explanation.

LEGO TECHNICからくり部屋 (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: awesomesauce • happy mutants • Japan • lego • makers • rube goldberg • videos • youtube

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My mom asked my brother what my nephew wanted for the holidays, and he told her the “Earth Defense Lego” set. “But they have so many legos, why do they need another set?” “They have a lot, but not enough to reliably defend Earth.”
disillusion

Well, if the person just works out the kinks in the system so none of the balls get stuck like what I was seeing from time to time, we just might have a new way to do the Lottery.
http://twitter.com/chriscoreline chris coreline

magnificent.
Cactaur

Set the audio to an extended Futurama theme.
http://www.facebook.com/paul.d.filippo Paul Di Filippo

The only possible way to improve this video is for someone more technically adept than I to replace the original soundtrack with Raymond Scott’s POWERHOUSE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfDqR4fqIWE
http://www.facebook.com/paul.d.filippo Paul Di Filippo

Okay, in my own kludgey fashion, I did it:

http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/lego_ball_machine–with_powerhouse/
- http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch
  
  Awesome. Just awesome.
http://www.kmoser.com kmoser

What I find most amazing is that none of the modules get backed up with too many balls to handle at once.
- Glen Able
  
  Agreed. I’d happily sit and watch for another hour or so if there was a video showing the effect of the batteries running low on each module, and it becoming overloaded.
- benher
  
  Watch the video from start to finish. Almost every module has some sort of a return/backup/holding area so that it doesn’t matter if a certain amount of balls get backed up. The first and last components had the largest “reserve” area.
  It is not only amazing that balls mostly continue as expected, but that there are so many safety nets in place per each piece. It may be subtle, but it’s all there.
nixiebunny

Translation: “Get this person a job designing a ball factory. “
Boundegar

And that, son, is how babies are made.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=name&id=1118134806 Doc_S

I think I just nerdgasm’d.
tlwest

Somehow I feel that this is the work of someone who designs industrial processes for a living.

Sort of like programmers who finish their day job to go home an work on open-source projects in their free time.
- http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo
  
  There’s a whole meme to the opposite effect; the plumber’s dripping taps, etc.
http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo

Damn, I have the spare time… wish I had the Lego.
atteSmythe

In my mind, this is how all packing and sorting facilities work.
bcsizemo

I want to know the price for all that…cause I suspect it ain’t cheap.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

Can’t decide if they had too much time on their hands, or just enough….
- http://mjfgates.myopenid.com/ mjfgates
  
  Just enough for that, anyway. If there had been more time, there would be more modules!
noah django

my face when