Stupid Fun Club

Craft & Design Fun & Games Technology
Stupid Fun Club

web_M35_Feat_Stupid_03

Excerpt from the article:

Tucked along an ordinary street in an industrial section of Berkeley, Calif., the company you’re about to visit has no receptionist. Instead, at the front door, meet MoonBot, a horny, tractorized robot with a taste for malt liquor; a waiter robot who, years ago, transformed a local restaurant into a testing ground for food-service robotics. (Short version: ketchup bottles got broken.)

Inside and up the stairs, guarded by battle-scarred stars from Robot Wars, past a pink box of doughnuts, enter an open-air office where the company’s executive team has gathered to load a human-sized trebuchet with water balloons they’re hurling at an iPad in order to test a new app that mimics a spectacular smash on the tablet’s screen when the balloon “shatters” it.

Ready? Thhhhhwopp! … Smash! Success! Laughter! Applause! It’s 10:08 a.m.

Welcome to the Stupid Fun Club (SFC).

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

Colin Berry is a freelance arts and design writer who lives in Los Angeles. He is the author, with Isabel Samaras, of On Tender Hooks (Chronicle Books).

View more articles by Colin Berry
FEEDBACK