Ex-Nasa engineer’s DIY Mission Impossible-style obstacle course for squirrels gets over 6M views!

Posted on 19/05/2021 by Neha Mistry

Squirrels are underrated. When Mark Rober, the DIY genius tells us to not take our friendly neighborhood squirrels lightly, we have to take him seriously. After all, he has battled them exactly one year ago, during the peak of lockdown, by creating a trap where the squirrels emerged victorious. The accidental YouTuber got into the task of creating this course as the squirrels kept eating the food he set up in the bird feeders in his backyard. Speaking of pandemic activities, we must say Mark has taken a creative spin-off from the traditional banana bread making and the end results are surely more entertaining!

Enter the Squirrels, the most popular and ring-leader Phat Gus with 3 other accomplished cohorts who take merely a few days to figure out the obstacles that took Mark and his friend over 2 months to make. Robb’s first squirrel obstacle course was inspired by the show American Ninja Warrior, but this time, failing that, he turned to grander inspiration like Ocean’s Eleven and Mission Impossible. The obstacle course begins with a casino entrance, followed by a rolling bar and a helicopter crashing to a wall of moving bricks (giving me a distinct Harry Potter – Diagon Alley entrance scene) vibe. Including a sum total of 9 obstacles, the course includes fun obstacles like a simulated laser room and the finale being a wooden safe, punningly name “Fort Knuts”.

The joy of getting your hands dirty is something all product designers are well aware of. This fun, quirky DIY project may look like it is full of laughs, but it includes some serious planning behind it. On our end, we root for the underdogs, who in this case are the squirrels – the simple, cute looking furry beasts who have outmaneuvered the big bad human! As the video reaches almost 6.5 Million views on YouTube in under 24 hours, we know this entertaining backyard soap opera has left us pining for more. Coming soon (we hope) Oceans 13, err.., I mean Fort Knuts 13!

Designer: Mark Rober

YouTubers have raised $20 million to plant 20 million trees

Posted on 20/12/2019 by Engadget RSS Feed

A few months ago, some of the top YouTubers like Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson and former NASA engineer Mark Rober launched the TeamTrees campaign. The initiative aimed to raise $20 million dollars, which would allow the Arbor Day Foundation to plant 20...

Former NASA engineer thwarts porch pirates again with ‘Glitter Bomb 2.0’

Posted on 16/12/2019 by Engadget RSS Feed

YouTuber and former NASA engineer Mark Rober is at it again with the Glitter Bomb 2.0 designed to give porch pirates some stinky karmic justice. After experiencing a package theft last year, Rober decided to exact revenge by creating the original gli...

This Rocket Powered Golf Club Swings at 150 MPH

Posted on 04/04/2019 by Conner Flynn

How fast can you swing a golf club? I have no idea what the record for a human might be, but I know that pros can swing at about 110 MPH. The rest of us, not very fast. If you want to swing a golf club really fast, you have to enlist some help from a former NASA engineer like Mark Rober who teamed up with Smarter Every Day’s Destin Sandlin to add some rocket power to the situation.

The built a swinging rig, then added two F size model rocket engines to a driver so that it swings at 150 MPH. You can check out the video right here. The first successful run begins at the 10:08 mark, but most of the failures are equally entertaining to watch. After they use the club to hit a few golf balls, they naturally move on to the important stuff like a watermelon. I’m not sure how far they managed to hit those golf balls, but I can tell you that the watermelon didn’t go far, because there wasn’t enough of it left to travel through the air as the thing exploded.

This is just proof that everything is better when it’s rocket-powered. Now we just need to get those snooty PGA golf pros to start using these clubs. It might make the sport more watchable.

If you dare want to try to build a rocket-powered golf club for yourself, you can check out the build docs over on Mark Rober’s instructional website.

[via Geekologie]

Package Thieves Get Glitter Bomb Surprise

Posted on 19/12/2018 by Conner Flynn

Package theft a problem many of us have experienced with the increase of home deliveries we get these days. Engineer Mark Rober is no stranger to this. A shipment had been delivered, but when checking his porch there was nothing. Security footage revealed someone stealing his delivery, and he had no recourse. What’s a rocket scientist supposed to do? Get some over-engineered revenge, that’s what.

It took six months to design and build, but Mark and his friends created the perfect booby trap. It is a compact unit disguised as an Apple HomePod. The most important part is the spinning cup on the top which contains a large amount of super-fine glitter. When activated, it throws glitter in every direction to make a truly bad day for package thieves. Glitter is the gift that keeps on giving after all. Oh and there’s also a can of fart spray that gets activated. So the criminals usually throw it out of a car window and then Mark can retrieve the device.

This package sits on the porch until an accelerometer detects movement. Then GPS checks to see if the package has traveled outside a geo-fence around Mark’s home. Then a signal is sent to the four smartphones inside of the package to start recording, and then deliver the glitter payload. The fart spray keeps triggering every 30 seconds to increase the chances they’ll dispose of the package. Now that’s an impressive engineering job.

You can see it in action several times in the video. These porch pirates will think twice before they steal another package.

[via Hackaday]

This Robot Perfectly Skips Stones

Posted on 06/08/2018 by Conner Flynn

At last, somebody built a robot that does something useful rather than just wait around to gain sentience and kill us. This guy is so cute he would never hurt anyone. I think. Ex-NASA engineer and inventor Mark Rober has built a robot that can skip the perfect rock. Sadly, this ‘bot can’t gain any satisfaction from the task the way a human does.

As it turns out, the keys to the best rock skips are four simple factors: you have to have a rock angle of 20 degrees, a rock path angle of 20 degrees, you have to spin the rock as much as possible and lastly you should choose a rock that is flat on the bottom and as heavy as possible for you to still get to your maximum arm speed.

That’s all well and good for human rock-throwing pros, but if you’re this robot, you just do what you’re told and throw the damn stones.

One day robots may skip humans across the water like big fleshy rocks and when that day comes, you can look back and see that it all started here. But for now, we are safe.

[via Geekologie]

World’s Largest Super Soaker Breaks Record and Breaks Glass

Posted on 12/07/2017 by Conner Flynn

It figures that it would be a former NASA engineer who had a hand in building the world’s largest Super Soaker water gun. It is so giant that this Super Soaker managed to break a Guinness World Record for being the largest on Earth. At 7 feet long, you can’t even hold the thing.

Engineer Mark Rober and his pal Bob Clagett over at I Like to Make Stuff collaborated on this huge water gun, that shoots at 2,400 psi and 243 mph. Watch it destroy a bunch of stuff in slow motion, which is always fun. Its stream shatters glass like it is nothing.

You’ll shoot your eye out kid! No really, you won’t have an eye anymore at all, so don’t point this thing at anyone’s face. Also, you’ll be soaked.

[via Laughing Squid]

Auto-tracking Dartboard Makes Everyone a Pro

Posted on 21/03/2017 by Conner Flynn

When you’re at the pub, drinking all night and playing darts, I bet your aim is pretty bad. For most of us, hitting the bulls-eye becomes harder the more you drink. Not when you’re playing with Mark Rober’s motion-tracking dart board though. This board makes everyone hit the bulls-eye (if they use the right dart.)

It automatically re-positions itself based on the trajectory of the dart thrown at it. At least it makes you feel the thrill of victory, even if that victory is hollow and your lack of skill has earned you nothing. It also has the capability of intentionally missing the target no matter how good a dart player you are.

Rober and his friend spent three years designing, building, and perfecting this dartboard. It uses six Vicon motion-tracking cameras, and standard darts that have been upgraded with infrared reflectors.

It takes only 200 milliseconds for the onboard computer to predict the trajectory of a thrown dart, and another 200 milliseconds for the dartboard’s six stepper motors to move it into position. Before impact, the system can even refine the trajectory tracking and reposition the board as many as 100 times to make sure the dart hits the center.

This won’t help you if you are miles off and throw the dart on the opposite side of the room though. If you throw that badly, it’s time to stop anyway before you kill someone.

[via Sploid]

The Science of Breaking a Bottle With Your Bare Hands

Posted on 06/09/2016 by Conner Flynn

Breaking a bottle with your bare hands isn’t a remotely good idea. Even if you have experience breaking bottles with a punch, you could seriously hurt yourself, and even permanently damage your hand. However, it turns out there’s a way you can pretty safely break a bottle with your bare hands, by hitting it a certain way. The reason it happens is because of science, not because you have magical powers.

Mark Rober teamed up once again with Kevin, The Backyard Scientist demonstrate the phenomenon in this video, and try to figure out why it works by looking at theories people have.

As it turns out, it just takes the right amount of liquid in the bottle and just the right palm strike to the bottle’s lip. It’s a pretty cool trick.

Giant NERF Gun Will Knock Out Your Soul

Posted on 23/06/2016 by Shane McGlaun

I’ve been involved in enough NERF wars to know you want to protect two specific parts of your body… or technically four. You protect your eyes and your balls. Everything else can take a hit with no ill effects. That’s not the case with the world’s largest NERF gun.

These giant suction cup darts will knock your soul straight out of your anus. Created by Mark Rober and the guys from Eclectical Engineering, this giant NERF pistol is powered by a paint ball canister designed to handle up to 3000 psi and hurls massive darts out the muzzle using 80 psi bursts.

It can launch pool noodles with plunger tops (these are the darts) at speeds up to 40 mph. I can only imagine the destruction that would happen if you shot your terrified foes with this thing in a neighborhood NERF war. I hope he doesn’t aim for the nads with that thing… or do I?

[via Nerdist]

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Tag Archives: mark rober

Ex-Nasa engineer’s DIY Mission Impossible-style obstacle course for squirrels gets over 6M views!

YouTubers have raised $20 million to plant 20 million trees

Former NASA engineer thwarts porch pirates again with ‘Glitter Bomb 2.0’

This Rocket Powered Golf Club Swings at 150 MPH

Package Thieves Get Glitter Bomb Surprise

This Robot Perfectly Skips Stones

World’s Largest Super Soaker Breaks Record and Breaks Glass

Auto-tracking Dartboard Makes Everyone a Pro

The Science of Breaking a Bottle With Your Bare Hands

Giant NERF Gun Will Knock Out Your Soul

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