Man Digs Out Basement Using Radio Controlled Toy Tractors 169
Phurge pointed out a story about a man with a fleet of remote control toys and a lot of patience. "Excavating a basement using professional machinery is nothing new but doing it with radio controlled (RC) scaled models is something unheard of. Welcome to the little big world of Joe, from Saskatchewan, Canada. For the past 7 years, Joe has been digging out his basement at an average annual rate of 8 to 9 cubic feet using nothing more than RC tractors and trucks. And we're talking about the whole nine yards here — he starts by transporting the excavator on an RC truck to the basement, unloads it, digs and uses other trucks to transfer the dirt up to the ground through a spiral ramp! He even has a miniature rock crusher! 'I feel quite fortunate to have stumbled onto this basement excavation idea, it's been a great past time to date dreaming up new ideas to tackle different projects along the way,' Joe wrote on the Scale4x4rc forums where he also posted pictures and videos of his feat."
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Follow-up article (but to related to the parent joke): a interview of Joe [blogspot.com].
Re:Follow up: (Score:5, Funny)
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Further:
I hope he has the required testing/engineering done and monitoring in place to maintain slope stability on the pit face under the excavator.
He could accelerate the bucket-and-shovel process by acquiring an RC dragline unit. This would be especially desirable if he has future work lined up in the area. eg: Neighbors' basements, latrine (outhouse) pits, etc.
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Joe says that he plans to have his house built within the next 18 months, at which point his mother will move in upstairs and he will take up residence in the basement with his computer.
Knock him all you want, but at least his hobby/models *do* something. I know tons of guys that spend $$$$$ on RC that do nothing but drive/fly around and crash.
:)
In that interview someone posted he said he doesn't want to stop. [blogspot.com] Hey Joe, when you run out of dirt in your basement you can use my backyard to dig a hole for an inground pool. At 2-3 cubic yards a year it should take awhile and I'm in no hurry, I won't even charge you much for use of my backyard
Basement (Score:5, Funny)
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Just waiting to see an RC moving truck pull up to his house. Maybe it will only take 5 years to move?
Re:Basement (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't you mean into his parent's basement?
Maybe he removed the dirt from his basement by putting it in their basement.
How about oing the same for snow clearing? (Score:3)
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You should try a shovel. Works much better than using your hand. You don't have to go all-out :P
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Can't immediately find the Slashdot story, but this was mentioned a few years ago:
http://www.i-shovel.com/ [i-shovel.com]
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You can buy radio controlled Piste Machines :-)
http://shop.pistenbully.com/product_info.php?products_id=4233 [pistenbully.com]
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Pretty fucking cool (Score:4, Funny)
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It was just an elaborate excuse to convince his wife to let him spend that much time on money on RC toys. In other words, it was a hobby.
Sounds like a pretty fun one too. He can build a man cave down there and showcase the RC toys and be able to tell visitors he created the whole thing with those toys.
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Wife?
Re:Pretty fucking cool (Score:5, Funny)
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That's the point - start now, and in 30 years you will!
Interesting idea (Score:3)
Re:Interesting idea (Score:5, Informative)
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I NASA has the code base pretty well covered, you need to deal with the ~20 min light speed time delay, which increasingly requires more autonomy from the rover to make exploration more efficient time-wise.
But wouldnt it be nice just to tell a robot to dig a hole of blah dimensions, place dirt at blah, come back the next day and find it done.
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Down to earth applications, hazardous zones (Score:5, Interesting)
My second thought was that this guy will be fist in line to operate remote manipulators on the moon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_manipulator [wikipedia.org]
My third thought was that we could have used this guy and some bigger RCs at Chernobyl and Fukushima.
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He does need better hydraulics though, that backhoe was weak when it was digging through the clay
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Stop making sense. You're killing the thread!
pointless. automation woulda been cool tho (Score:2)
if he could have automated the control with a camera and PC handling the RC control stuff it would have been a cool project. instead he coulda used a shovel and been done in a coupla weeks.
Re:pointless. automation woulda been cool tho (Score:4, Informative)
You missed the fact that he does this for *RECREATION*, he even removed a conveyor belt assembly for helping to speed it up too much. (As well as making the basement difficult to traverse). This guy is a FARMER, and if he's to be believed has limited time off-farm for recreational purposes, so this activity fills that gap for him.
No different than the time many people invest into model trains or dozens of other activities that provide no 'measurable' productive expenditure of time, but through which they derived immense satisfaction in the process of doing.
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This guy is a FARMER, and if he's to be believed has limited time off-farm for recreational purposes, so this activity fills that gap for him.
Hmm, I wonder how many excavator, truck and tractor drivers have mini-farms for recreational purposes, does farmville count? ;)
Next week... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Next week... (Score:5, Funny)
Chicks dig basements.
They'd have it done in less time, too.
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Wait... what!?
I was not aware that chicks were all into basements. Maybe when they are 14 and literally have no other place to go and the guy is a jock, but past the time you can have a drivers license? Not so much.
They would only have it done in less time because chicks have this amazing ability to, dependent upon their hotness, to amass armies of men to do their bidding.
You get a half dozen hot chicks in thongs with some beer, and you could easily get two to three times that many men digging a basement
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Math seems wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Average rate of 9 cubic feet per year X 7 years = 63 cubic feet.
That's a cube of dirt 4' x 4' x 4'.
Hardly sounds like 'excavating a basement'.
I'm guessing that the 9 cubic feet number is wrong. Maybe 9 square feet (with an undisclosed height of about 8'-10') for an annual average of 72-90 cubic feet and a final excavation of a room about 8' x 8'?
Re:Math seems wrong (Score:5, Informative)
There's a more detailed article that the first one links to. In the more detailed article, it says:
So what we have is a unit conversion failure in the first article. 1 yard = 3 feet, but 1 cubic yard = 27 cubic feed. 3 cubic yards is 81 cubic feet, then.
So 7 * 81 = 567, which gives you a cube just over 8' on a side, as you suggest.
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Yeah, so easy. Why use metric when you can use elbows and noses and feet and schlongs, they are much easier to comprehend and evaluate on the spot, right? right?
Re:Math seems wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, like nobody ever made the same mistake converting between cm^3 and m^3. 1 cm^3 = 1mL, and 1000 cm^3 is 1 L. 1000 cm = 10 m, but 10 m^3 is 1,000,000 L. But, folks in chem class made that mistake readily. Metric doesn't magically make the "forgot to cube the ratio" problem go away when dealing with volumes.
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The mistake is the same, no matter the units.
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SHUT UP!! Metric is better!!
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You know, it's a little ironic, but the standard subdivisions of an inch (1/2, 1/4, etc.) or of fluid measure (8oz cup, 16oz pint, 32oz quart, 64oz half gallon, 128oz gallon), all of which are related by powers of 2, are a better match for binary arithmetic than powers of 10.
Sure, that's about the only place imperial measure works out better. But, I still find it a little ironic.
The powers of 10 in metric really don't mesh as nicely with computer arithmetic as you might like. If you start with meters, sti
And for the rest of the planet (Score:3)
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Let's hope nobody uses the article's author for the next mars mission [wikipedia.org].
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Inspiring story (Score:5, Informative)
television (Score:2)
people have too much entertainment these days to go around being productive doing things like this.
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well if you could automate it - then you could build them, program them, and let them do their work.. over time that you don't have to do it have a new basement extension carved out.. think of them less of RC toys at that point but rather automated excavation robots..
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God God, man! Think of all the construction workers who'll be laid off when basements can be dug by computer or remotely from China!
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well if you could automate it - then you could build them, program them, and let them do their work.. over time that you don't have to do it have a new basement extension carved out.. think of them less of RC toys at that point but rather automated excavation robots..
I find your slave-labor practices unjust and offensive, We of the lawn worker's union are hereby on strike! [amazon.com]
Now he just needs to automate it (Score:2)
How about hack the process? (Score:2)
Or at the least experiment with the process now that he has the traditional methods down... maybe he can build and test out new excavation devices/technology using his small scale operation as a model.
For the REAL Geek Award.... (Score:5, Interesting)
... this man should have been a bit more geeky and lazy at the same time by putting the camera and the RC controls on the Internet, then having remote volunteers run the RC toys to dig out his basement.
This gets me thinking I can probably get the internet to excavate and build me a large swimming pool, given about 50 RC bulldozers and a month of use of my web-server.
Re:For the REAL Geek Award.... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry, but I'm going to burst your bubble with a single word: griefers.
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Gamify the problem and use the right solution with the highest score. That way, if you set a sensible sets of scoring rules, calculated server side, you will avoid the consequence arising form the grievers, and you will solve you probably NP-Hard problem of using RC robots to build a pool. But if you set the rules wrong, you get creative briefing that achieve to solve the problem described by your rules...
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right but if you use the scoring (or the lack of) to kick players.. kinda like auto booting TPK'ers
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The problem with scoring rules to enforce behavior is that you need to make sure that your scoring rules are solid. On top of that, you would also need to make sure that your walled garden is, well, walled... In other words, if you want a pool dug, you will have to set physical parameters in the shape of the pool (i.e. stakes driven every 6 to 8 inches) or a virtual parameter like a virtual wall (i.e. similar to the one used for the Roomba).
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all of which are required in planning. to have a game you need a goal - that goal would need defined standards for when it was acheive.. i would think size shape location are bare bones for digging out things like a pool.
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That was my first thought. You'd have the excavator pulling the dump truck onto its side, and the backhoe trying to dump dirt as far from the work site as possible within the first minute of going online.
Re:For the REAL Geek Award.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I would watch that... especially if they have Craig Charles as the presenter again, and Philippa Forrester doing the pit interviews.
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He probably doesn't want a penis-shaped basement.
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Or a giant swastika. "There is AIDS in the basement."
Hyphens (Score:3)
The headline of this article is a good example of why it is important to hyphenate adjective phrases.
Sincerely,
Your Third Grade Teacher
Re:Hyphens (Score:4, Interesting)
I've reread the title four times, and I can't figure out a single way to parse the sentence in a grammatically-correct fashion other than the one way that was intended -- especially since the only place I can think of where a hyphen would apply would be in "radio-controlled."
So how did you misread it, out of curiosity?
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Man Digs Out Basement using Radio; Controlled Toy Tractors
He needs to upgrade. (Score:2)
Out-Source hours to dig. (Score:2)
No!!!!! (Score:2)
Some People (Score:2)
Some people have way too much time on their hands.
Dig it!
Interface control (Score:3)
Be careful what you wish for (Score:2)
Soon construction and warehouse work will be outsourced to oversees workers using internet RC. It's inevitable.
That's great (Score:2)
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Huh (Score:2)
Personally I found watching the video incredibly boring, but I guess that's why I'd never do something like this.
When I first read the summary I assumed he used sensors and some sort of AI to do this while he wasn't there, now that's something I could get behind, shit getting done while I'm gone.
Which leads me to wonder, why don't we have robots doing this sort of thing on a large scale?
Define the dimensions of the hole you want excavated and let them do the work in a tireless, efficient manner.
Leave one gu
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uhm.
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The basement isn't the point. (Score:4, Insightful)
The man simply likes playing with R/C earthmovers. And this is a way for him to keep on doing it during the five-month Canadian Winter, when everything is covered in snow. I doubt if he would care if it took 20 years to finish.
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Yeah I bet he's disappointed now that it's done.
Great now patent and clone (Score:2)
This is a great idea, just like those radio controlled choppers that build towers with blocks, this could also make excavation quite different in the future, allow all these nano tech devices/machines dig out the basement as per the requires specs, and then make some cement trucks to start pouring and even some other machines to even out and compact it, as it is cool it is also quite fast should you have hundreds of these machines instead of 1 or 2....this was the beta stage, now let's see what a fleet of 1
Fukushima Daichi job offer (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Mr Joe,
Our company is looking for talented remote-control specialists.
We need dedicated operators for a long term commitment in R-C cleaning on large areas of confined space.
You are likely to have all qualifications required to join the main R-C team at our Fukushima-Daichi facility.
We're looking forward to hearing from you,
Tepco Director
(my emphasis)
No solely by rc (Score:2)
My first though was how do the remote control toys dig into the dirt. Well looking at the video he first does the digging by hand using a pick and breaks up the larger pieces. The remote control vehicles are just used to haul the material. Hardly digging it out with nothing but remote control vehicles.
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He should've put a jackhammer attachment on the excavator to do the ground-breaking :-P
Now to make it Nerdworthy. (Score:3)
The next step is to rather than human control them, built in the logic to for self control. It would have to be coordinated between different machine types and job types, a sort of swarm communication. Then scale them up a bit, allow for remote repair of components seen to commonly ware out. Load them on a rocket, shoot to moon, and get building that moon base already! :)
But wait... (Score:2)
Re:OMG (Score:4, Funny)
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It took two huge dumpsters to take the dirt away. It was done with no power equipment at all, in 2 days, by 4 guys.
It is a great idea though, I can imagine remote controlled smaller equipment being used by real contractors in the future.
Would it be easier to use a truck to take the dumpsters away?
--
Lawrence of Arabia would have trouble with such dust.
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