Beijing farmer Wu Yulu must sell some of his stunning hand-built robots to pay off debt incurred when one of his projects burned down his house. The bots–some capable of "serving tea and lighting cigarettes"–are constructed from material scavenged from junkyards and farm equipment. So far, he has sold two robots, one to a collector and the other to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. One of them, named "Wu Laowu," went for US$3750. From People's Daily Online
(Image snip from Reuters/China Daily) :
"I couldn't sleep well for several days after selling the child, but I had no other choice. I had to pay off my debts," said Wu, 44, a farmer from Mawu village in eastern Beijing…"I loved to play with robots. The cleverer they became, the deeper the emotional link I felt to them. Later, I began to call them my sons…"
Last month, Wu made the headlines again for a new invention, a robot able to pull a rickshaw one step every three or four seconds.
Sitting in the rickshaw, Wu said he has no plans to start a robot business.
"I can invent robots able to carry a sedan chair, and next I will make robots of the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac.
