Auto Perfume Sprayer is a work-in-progress device intended to check a person's odor as they return home. A smell sensor feeds readings to a microcontroller; when the result is classified as 'BAD,' a servo presses a perfume bottle to spray automatically.
Makers BULAT IARKIEV and Yadanar Htay describe the project on ProtoPedia as a way to respond to odors that people may not notice themselves, such as after exercise. The project is currently marked as in development.
Come home and the doorway silently judges your smell, then responds with perfume. That's a rather opinionated welcome.
To reduce the need to count tiny screws and nuts by hand when packing clock kits, a set of dedicated dispensers was built to release fixed quantities. Laser-cut acrylic channels line the parts up, and operating a lever drops the required number.
One dispenser releases six nuts at a time and another releases three magnets. The screw version went through several revisions to its tracks and hopper and was eventually expanded to hold more than fifteen sets ready to distribute into paper cups. The maker is mitxela.
Not wanting to miscount six tiny parts has turned into something resembling a custom ammunition magazine. The counting task disappeared into a surprisingly substantial piece of machinery.
Sole-Sageel automates the gesture of lowering your beer mug below the other person's during a toast. Two long-stroke solenoids physically raise and lower the mug.
The device was created by Pokosute for Takaha Kiko's 13th Solenoid Contest, where it won an award for especially absurd and useless creations. On the linked page, see the section titled 自動忖度マシーン「ソレサゲール」.
A tiny gesture that normally takes one hand now gets two long-stroke solenoids. Automating humility somehow makes the whole ritual much more elaborate.
For his student final project, Jude Robinson built Daisy, a robot that automatically makes literal daisy chains. Two opposing XY gantries with grippers alternate handling flowers, taking each daisy from a conveyor and threading its stem through the previous flower.
The machine makes a short slit in each newly added stem, then places a thin threading post through the opening to prepare for the next flower. Because daisy stems vary in shape and diameter, V-shaped grippers and other mechanical constraints keep the process aligned without relying on sensing.
A daisy chain is about as simple and pastoral as a handmade object gets, yet automating it calls for two XY gantries and a conveyor. The delicacy of the result and the seriousness of the machinery barely match.
The Black Thunder Driven Development device monitors token usage in AI development tools such as Claude Code and automatically dispenses Black Thunder chocolate bars when usage reaches set thresholds. An indicator shows progress against the five-hour usage limit, with a full limit corresponding to five bars.
When a reward is triggered, the machine cuts open the wrapper and presents the chocolate ready to eat. A robot arm also replenishes the stock. The project won the Blackathon hackathon and was built by YS_beaver, Yota Saito, Mikihiro Urano, and Tomoki Banno.
The more work you give the AI, the more chocolate the human receives. The robot even opens the wrapper for you.
Kazuya Shibata's Fully Automatic Disposable Chopstick Splitter 2 is designed to split disposable wooden chopsticks cleanly and evenly. It feeds the chopsticks in, centers and pulls the two halves apart, then uses a circular saw to cut the remaining joint and a belt sander to smooth the ends.
The machine includes suspension to accommodate thickness variations and a self-centering gripping mechanism. Shibata spent about a year developing it, while processing one pair of chopsticks takes roughly four minutes. A task normally finished by hand in a moment has grown into a complete miniature production line.
All this machinery exists to avoid one bad chopstick split, and by the end a circular saw and belt sander have joined the process. The disposable chopsticks are receiving remarkably premium treatment.
XPENG commissioned a production line for its IRON humanoid robot in September 2026. Once the first unit was assembled, it was not carried away on a cart: the finished robot autonomously walked off the production line under its own power.
XPENG says more than 80% of the line's core processes are automated. IRON has 76 body degrees of freedom and 21 in each hand, and the company plans to begin mass production by the end of 2026 with deliveries starting in 2027.
Most products leave a factory as cargo. This one reaches the end of the line and simply walks out like its shift has started.
BB Korry’s “Anything Runway” is a small automated stage that sends hand-sized objects down a catwalk as if they were fashion models. Curtains open, an object moves along the narrow stage, performs turns or pauses at the end, and then returns so the next “performer” can appear.
Lighting and sound can change for each object, letting figures, snacks and even a bottle of shichimi spice receive full runway treatment. Magnets and a moving platform handle the automatic performer changes.
If the model cannot walk, simply make the runway do the walking instead. Suddenly even a spice bottle has stage presence.
Most automatic Rubik's Cube machines are built to solve the puzzle as efficiently as possible. This one was deliberately made to represent the experience of someone who cannot solve it. Created by Shintaro Tamefusa, who says he cannot solve a Rubik's Cube himself, the machine grabs the cube with four arms, performs apparent analysis on a PC and keeps turning the puzzle. Eventually it starts voicing doubts, suggests dubious shortcuts and finally gives up and drops the cube. Instead of automating competence, it automates being stuck.
The machine doesn't solve the puzzle; it mechanizes the feeling of not knowing what to do. Even the robot starts losing confidence.
Come home and the doorway silently judges your smell, then responds with perfume. That's a rather opinionated welcome.