Disney Have Built This Nifty Little Robot

Disney have branched out into tech and have built this adorable little sand turtle-like robot. The Beachbot has been designed to draw pictures in the sand.

The project is a joint venture by Disney Research and a student team at ETH Zürich. The cute Beachbot can turn an ordinary beach into an artist's canvas. The pictures are drawn by the bot by using a controllable rake at the rear that has individually controllable pins that can be raised and lowered to etch thin or thick lines in the sand. The robot understands it's boundaries when four vertical poles are placed around the desired canvas area. Artwork can be pre-programmed or users can simply use a remote to manually guide the bot around the sand.

Might seem pointless for us adults (who generally prefer to dig large pointless holes at the beach) but Disney own loads of beach resorts and kiddies will freak out when they wake up and see their favourite Disney characters sketched into the sand.