William Osman is back with another amusing project. This time he’s testing out the old “carrot on a stick” idiom, but instead he’s doing “hot dog on a robot.” That sentence may seem a bit like gibberish, so let me clarify. The old story is that a clever young boy figured out he could make a stubborn donkey pull his cart by dangling a carrot in front of the donkey’s face, from a stick. As the donkey stepped forward, the stick moved forward as well (being held by the boy on the cart), causing the donkey to continue walking forever.
William wanted to see if this approach would work on a bull dog, but instead of a simple stick he spiced it up with some modern engineering. His motorized system is more complex than it might initially appear. When you set the angle of the dangle, his system maintains that angle even as the wearer moves and rotates!
William did a great job on the engineering side. The system appears to work fantastically. However, his predictions on the dog’s behavior may have been a bit misguided. The chosen canine, Barkley, was initially enticed to simply look upward at the hot dog and stand still. After a modification to move the treat further from Barkley’s face, there were fleeting moments of actual “dog chasing hotdog on a stick” action!
However, it seemed that Barkley wanted give up once he realized he couldn’t reach it. Maybe Barkley wasn’t as stubborn as a mule. Or perhaps just a tad smarter.
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