The Zen Gardner

Craft & Design Home Robotics
The Zen Gardner
[youtube:http://youtu.be/GoYVbrLCCKI]

On a grassy patch at Maker Faire, Jared Ficklin and his brother Joey built a rectangular wooden frame, filled with sand — you could be forgiven for thinking it looks a bit like a sandbox — for their robot, called the Zen Gardner. A small control panel on one side let Fairegoers drive the bot, which was equipped with spurs to rake the sand into patterns, the way a Zen master might.

“I wanted to get people thinking,” says Ficklin. “The whole point is to rake the garden yourself.” If the Zen Gardner is so un-Zen, maybe it shouldn’t even exist. But, he admits, “it’s a lot of fun to drive.”

1 thought on “The Zen Gardner

  1. Joel Effrusy says:

    Impressively bad spelling. You do know that Gardener has two Es, right?

Comments are closed.

Discuss this article with the rest of the community on our Discord server!
Tagged

Nathan Hurst is an editor at Make. He loves anything having to do with science or bicycling. He tweets as @nathanbhurst.

View more articles by Nathan Hurst

ADVERTISEMENT

Maker Faire Bay Area 2023 - Mare Island, CA

Escape to an island of imagination + innovation as Maker Faire Bay Area returns for its 15th iteration!

Buy Tickets today! SAVE 15% and lock-in your preferred date(s).

FEEDBACK