Finally, a Robot Turtle that Doodles in the Sand

Perhaps this is the robot device that will bring future generations to their knees in anguish and empathy for our generation, but alas it exists:

Yes, BeachBot is a little robot turtle that draws stuff in the sand. Using its little cold metal fingers, it tirelessly scrapes designs into a Swiss beach near you. Why does this matter? What does this project merit that it should pull, by my count, eight engineers away from the matters of world hunger and missing sock matches? Well here’s an obvious item to me: beach sports.

For those who like to partake in a little beach volleyball or sandy football or wiffleball, creating the proper and fair dimensions of the playing field often poses the greatest challenge. Ride along in my beach cruiser of imagination with me as we forecast a day in which you and I, with a football tucked under my arm and our skin bespeckled with sunscreen, stroll to the beachside with little Sally’s toy turtle robot. A few taps on our phone, and then Turtle Robot is digging a perfectly and neatly designed football field for our weekend glory.

Imagine games of beach volleyball no longer mired with: “It’s not fair; our side of the court is bigger!” or games of beach wiffleball where second base, the pitcher’s mound, and home plate form a straight line, not a drunk driver’s line.

Of course: BeachBot in the above-featured Zurich beach is moving across an almost perfectly flat plane on an uninviting Swiss coast. No one has ever played a game of football on that beach. In fact, BeachBot is perhaps the funnest thing that ever happened to that plot of gray sadness.

Which is to say: My hometown Florida beach would not provide suitable terrain for this current edition of BeachBot. The uneven, soft sands and the coast’s gently sloping angles — to say nothing of the passed-out-in-vomit Spring Breakers — would provide enormous obstacles for the robot presently designed. Perhaps the Florida Gulf Coast model should appear more like this:

But until then, I guess BeachBot will have to do. And until BeachBot is ready for public consumption, I guess scraping our heels through the sand and complaining incessantly about the dimensions will have to do.