the onda

Dave and I went to see the Gutenborg today, a robot that can print and bind a softcover book in some reasonable amount of time without human hands touching it. They've got it installed at the Harvard Bookstore (in Cambridge), and if you like books and robots, it is worth checking out.

As it happened, the machine was getting serviced when we showed up. But we were treated to a nice chat with John, one of the hardware engineers who has been working on the printer part of it. Talking to him was a good reminder that even in the realm of hardware, small focused teams can make a huge difference in the product development process.

As for the machine itself, it's not clear to me that this particular invention will be solving the book world's backlist problems any time soon. Much like the Roomba, this is one robot that seems to still be straddling the line between novelty and usefulness in a way that indicates we're a few years away from the Star Trek replicator fantasy coming true.

What was fun to see however, was how many pieces of the Gutenborg are now available to hobbyists everywhere. Its brains for instance, were composed of a Mac Mini with a USB hub that drives something that looks like a big boy version of one of the Arduino motor shields. And most of the robot's structure is built from an aluminum skeleton that Andy has been raving about called the "80/20 Aluminum Industrial Erector set." Even the perfect binding system the robot was using seemed to be lifted from most of the low-tech, low-cost binders I've seen in my days in the digital photo book business.

As more of this knowledge gets spread broadly, I am sure that entrepreneurs and hackers will find better ways to bring useful robots into new domains of our daily lives. And I for one welcome our coming Cylon overlords.