🏆 Bragging about over-engineering kindness

This is my newsletter where I share cool stuff people do on the internet.

You might remember me from my CatGPT 🐈‍⬛ project. I created it in a single day to show that people can make fun stuff with AI, and millions of people loved it!! 😻

Last week we bragged about solo founders.

This week we’re bragging about people building for somebody they care about! 🫶

Saying “I care about you” is nice… but building something wicked awesome for them might be nicer.

This week’s humans built some wonderfully overengineered things for a dad, a guitarist, and a teacher with a very specific (and slightly ridiculous) dream.

Let’s get into today’s bragging!

Adam

Jake Laser has been trying to give his dad bionic legs since he was 8 years old.

His dad Mark has multiple sclerosis, and has spent decades using a wheelchair. Hiking trails 🥾 and rough terrain he used to love became pretty hard to reach.

20-ish years later, Jake came back to the idea using a four-legged Unitree B2-W industrial robot 🤯 costing $100,000 with support from a company called Ark Stem.

How awesome is that??

Buuuut being the absolute legend he is, Jake didn't stop at "functional."

He also gave it curved body panels inspired by 1940s Bugattis 🚗😎, carbon fibre accents, chrome headlights, spinner wheel covers, and LED underglow. 

Even cooler, Jake’s robotic walking chair (which he gave as a Father’s Day present) helped his dad climb a hill for the first time in decades!

It’s still a prototype, and has plenty left to figure out. But going from cardboard bionic legs at 8 years old to an actual four-legged robot for his dad is a ridiculously kind way to keep a childhood idea alive. 

Go Jake!! 👏

A few years ago, postdoctoral teaching scholar Brian Davis told one of his students something he probably never thought would come true:

He wanted to be a Muppet! 🐸

So when Maddy Reedy, an engineering student from Cal Poly, was brainstorming her senior project, she recruited 3 classmates and decided they were going to make it happen.

The team, Maddy, Fredy Herrarte, Jake Schuman and Jackson Reynolds called themselves “The Muppetronics.”

They studied professional animatronics, got advice from a Universal Studios engineer, and built mechanisms that let their animatronic gesture, turn his head, and even stand up from his chair. 🤯

Thanks to Maddy and her fellow Muppet engineers, “Real Brian” finally got to meet… Muppet Brian. 😂

A tiny, fuzzy, moving, talking animatronic version of himself.

Brian got to become a Muppet, and the students got a pretty great start on becoming professional animatronics engineers.

Go Muppetronics!!👏👏

John Pattison hasn't been able to play guitar since his stroke in 2017. 

When four mechanical engineering students at the University of Leeds heard about it, they wanted to help. 🎸💪  Even better, they’re all musicians themselves!

Harvey Roberts, Isaac Martin, Phil Asante-Siaw and Sam Matthews built John a robotic strumming device.

The idea is that John has to initiate every strum himself, and the machine gives him just enough assistance to complete the movement. The better John gets, the less the robot does.

John hasn't been able to test it yet due to health complications, but he still went out of his way to praise the students:

"I've been so impressed by the students' diligence and enthusiasm… it is so helpful for different generations to work together."

Harvey, Isaac, Phil and Sam… you guys are worth bragging about!! 👏👏

If somebody you know is building something weird, useful, kind, or just ridiculously awesome, hit reply with their name + a link to what they’re doing.

Maybe you’ll see me bragging about them next week 👀😁

A lot of technology gets judged by how many people it can reach.

A million users!!

A billion!!

This week’s cool humans had a slightly smaller 🤏 target market.

One person.

A dad who wanted to go places his wheelchair couldn't, a guitarist who wanted to play again, and a teacher who (for reasons I totally applaud) really wanted to be a Muppet.

Maybe that’s one of the best things we can do with all this crazy technology we suddenly have access to.

Use it on each other. 🧡