Japanese Robot Eats Snow, Poops Out Bricks of Ice

Meet Yuki-taro, a Japanese robot built to quickly clear roads after heavy snows.

The cute little guy, about 5 feet long and 2 and a half feet high, simply plows into snowbanks, taking in the white stuff, compressing it and neatly stacking it in two-foot-long bricks on his rear bed.

Created by a consortium of private companies, municipal governments and university researchers, Yuki-taro is equipped with two video cameras in his "eyes" as well as a GPS tracking system to be completely self-guided.

The prototype has already won a design award, and doctored photos of it modified to look like the popular Pokemon character Pikachu have popped up online.

Maybe you can stack dozens of 50 lb. blocks of ice, but that's not something I could do, and I wouldn't wish it on my husband either.

The robots mash the snow into ice blocks. It drops them by the curb. Another truck comes by nd picks them up in a day or two or a few, just like garbage pickup. It's a more efficient system than the model of plowing streets and leaving walls of snow behind, which is the current norm in cities that see a lot of snowfall.

Drop the bricks on a frozen lake, or pile them in a cistern so they're a source of water after the thaw.

Even if someone had the kind of space to store all of these blocks, what happens when the weather warms up? Unless the blocks are stored outside, there will be a huge mess in the storage shed or garage.

A storage shed or a garage? We're not talking about cordwood or bales of straw here. They don't need cover. Indoor storage would be completely screwy. If you're out in the country, dump them in your pond -- if you're in a city or suburb, see three paragraphs up.

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