They Strapped A Nail Gun To A Drone
Humans, we have learned, don’t care too much about their longevity. True, there is a whole industry in pills, potions and Pilates that claim to give you a longer, bendier life. Yet time and time again, when confronted with an objectively bad, health-hazardous, society-crumbling idea, humans will always opt to do the thing. Today, said thing is strapping a nail gun to a drone.
In defiance of man and God, engineers from the University of Michigan have mounted a nail gun to a drone, because that is a thing this world needed.
This mechanical abomination was allegedly created for the purpose of securing roofing tiles, which is a fairly noble cause considering roughly 5000 people are hospitalised after falling off ladders every year in Australia.
Still, it feels a lot like Matthew Romano, Yuxin Chen, Owen Marshall and Ella Atkins started with “let’s strap a nail gun to a drone” and worked their way backwards from there.
Perhaps, you might think, this was some sort of special nail gun, created in a lab for this specific purpose. Nope. These Four Horsemen of the Autocalypse headed to their local hardware store, grabbed a RYOBI 18-Volt ONE+ Cordless Brad Nailer, and strapped that 18-gauge sucker to a DJI Spreading Wings S1000 octocopter.
Using a modified version of open-source autopilot software ArduPilot, the flying nail shooter is able to navigate to the shingles that need to be secured, as well as apply enough force for “reliable nail deployment”. Keeping a drone steady enough to operate a nail gun is no small feat, though it is also a terrifying one.
According to New Scientist, Atkins thought up the whole endeavour after having to repair her own roof several years ago. I also hate chores so I respect the motive, but I’m not sure I’d go so far as to develop a nail-shooting drone to avoid them.
The 9.25kg contraption can currently only fly for 10 minutes, and is only able to shoot nails when the tooltip is pressed against a surface. However, to heighten the danger, Michigan’s chaos-loving engineers have expressed interest in attaching a power cord, and switching to a more powerful pneumatic nail gun. Somebody please stop them.