#robot butt

What’s that last one, you ask? A robot butt that sits on seats? Ikea built one, and more. Somewhere, deep in a furniture factory, are row upon row of android asses, endlessly trying to test the durability and reliability of the latest in furniture. Most seats survive millions of sittings, but faulty designs or weak early manufacturing is announced with a cracking sound as it yields beneath the might of a synthetic human posterior.

Ikea, like all companies in this day and age, was working hard to cut its bottom line. One of the easiest ways was to cut back on tool-builders: the gals and guys who maintain the machines, who find an easier way to do something, who get out of bed in the morning for that glorious one-percent productivity gain that they are never monetarily rewarded for. In their place, the void is filled with contractors, and when I heard about the layoffs, I immediately leapt at an opportunity to fill the butt void.

With limited mechanical engineering experience, and even less tact, winning the bid meant I was already in for a difficult task. When they told me that Ikea was interested in an even more powerful butt, to simulate today’s huskier Americans, the job very nearly became impossible. In a panic, I rushed to the spares shed, hoping to grab anything at all that could make a reasonable prototype.

In an afternoon, I banged together my miracle. Powered by an old RV-cammed Mopar 440, the Ass-Master 9000 was capable of bouncing silicone buttcheeks off of a seat cushion with extreme prejudice. There were adjustable speeds, too, but due to a pretty horrendous vacuum leak at the carb, they didn’t really work.

Strange thing is, after the initial demo, I didn’t get a call back. At first, I thought Ikea simply wasn’t interested in such a forward-thinking invention, but then the fall collection of seats started coming out. They were stained black with engine oil, and robust carbon-fibre reinforcements.

Like I said, I was a student of Ikea history, so I knew when the company was trying to hide something. It wasn’t until the inch-thick fall catalogue arrived in my mailbox, evidenced by my postie wearing a distinctly unfashionable hernia band. The last few pages of that catalogue had tearful memorials for the upper management, all of whom seemed to have been killed suddenly during the same industrial accident.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyE4_3IC5yo)

Power cord goes WHERE?!? - (Ep 4) The Uncertain: Episode 1