Anyone else watch this show?
I find it kid of interesting and some of the stuff these guys come up with and build is kind of cool.
The premise of the show is sort of a Mythbusters meets Smash Lab! and while I'm sure that may generate some groans, hear me out.
While Smash Lab!'s concept was to take an idea, centered around crashing something or blowing something up, and try and find a "solution" for it. Like trying to make a "cow catcher" on a train that could push a car off the tracks (rather than wrecking it) or a driveway in a bank "collapsing" under a fleeing vechile to entrap the robbers. Their biggest problem(s) were not fully fleshing out their ideas with thought and sometimes going too far with them. (The "cow catcher" on the train was made too complex. They tried to make it so that it could "sweep" the car off the tracks when simply just softening the blow woul've sufficed.) The show also didn't seem to have a clear "end result" as-in, to what end are these tests being done? Say they have an idea that works? Then what? Anyway, it would seem the show failed.
But here we have Prototype This! a show that seems to have a similar concept but the execution seems to be better. First of all the show is less centered around smashing things and/or blowing them up and are a lot more "practical." The team (which is mostly forgetable and missing "the chick" the show's two drawbacks) first of all mostly comes up with their designs, devices, and ideas on their own (Smash Lab mostly took exsisting ideas and concepts and applied them in different situations) and their final "build" is a lot more fleshed and thought out than Smash Lab's tended to be.
It has the same problem as Smash Lab on what the "end result" is of a sucessful build, but it's been an interesting show so far.
Twp weeks ago was an 'advanced firesuit' that had things like a headsup display that showed an overlay of the area using night vision/infrared, ident tags for other firefighters to be identified in the dark, a backpack and suit that was a bit less bulkier with a fire-exstignuisher built into the arm and the idea the real fire fighters were most impressed with was a remtoe-controlled stair-climbing robot that could carry equipment for four men on it up a building in half the time and could even carry a victim back down the stairs.
Hard to say where it goes from here, but the idea and end result was pretty neat. Other ideas have been a water-ride with a small foot print (basically a motion-controlled ring of water-slide tubes you sit in and the ring moves, tilts, bucks and such along with a pre-programmed slide course that is also projected inside the ride.
This week was a pizza-delivering robot (the Prototype This! warehouse is on an island on the otherside of the Bay Bridge where, I guess, they cannot get pizza deliery sparking the build). The concepts they came up with have current limitations that could easily be worked around but was interesting none the less.
One was a robot that could follow a course to a destination where the pizza-buyer swipes his credit-card releasing his pizza from the robot another idea was a self-driving car that does the same job. The episoded ended with showing a car driving itself (using GPS and a pre-programmed route) to the destiation (along closed streets with the team in a chase vechile) the car had an incident on a tight turn getting off the Bay Bridge, but otherwise it was interesting to watch.
Again, I'm not sure this idea is practical right now but it showed some promise and who knows what a few more years of development will get, but for the most part I've liked this show.
I find it kid of interesting and some of the stuff these guys come up with and build is kind of cool.
The premise of the show is sort of a Mythbusters meets Smash Lab! and while I'm sure that may generate some groans, hear me out.
While Smash Lab!'s concept was to take an idea, centered around crashing something or blowing something up, and try and find a "solution" for it. Like trying to make a "cow catcher" on a train that could push a car off the tracks (rather than wrecking it) or a driveway in a bank "collapsing" under a fleeing vechile to entrap the robbers. Their biggest problem(s) were not fully fleshing out their ideas with thought and sometimes going too far with them. (The "cow catcher" on the train was made too complex. They tried to make it so that it could "sweep" the car off the tracks when simply just softening the blow woul've sufficed.) The show also didn't seem to have a clear "end result" as-in, to what end are these tests being done? Say they have an idea that works? Then what? Anyway, it would seem the show failed.
But here we have Prototype This! a show that seems to have a similar concept but the execution seems to be better. First of all the show is less centered around smashing things and/or blowing them up and are a lot more "practical." The team (which is mostly forgetable and missing "the chick" the show's two drawbacks) first of all mostly comes up with their designs, devices, and ideas on their own (Smash Lab mostly took exsisting ideas and concepts and applied them in different situations) and their final "build" is a lot more fleshed and thought out than Smash Lab's tended to be.
It has the same problem as Smash Lab on what the "end result" is of a sucessful build, but it's been an interesting show so far.
Twp weeks ago was an 'advanced firesuit' that had things like a headsup display that showed an overlay of the area using night vision/infrared, ident tags for other firefighters to be identified in the dark, a backpack and suit that was a bit less bulkier with a fire-exstignuisher built into the arm and the idea the real fire fighters were most impressed with was a remtoe-controlled stair-climbing robot that could carry equipment for four men on it up a building in half the time and could even carry a victim back down the stairs.
Hard to say where it goes from here, but the idea and end result was pretty neat. Other ideas have been a water-ride with a small foot print (basically a motion-controlled ring of water-slide tubes you sit in and the ring moves, tilts, bucks and such along with a pre-programmed slide course that is also projected inside the ride.
This week was a pizza-delivering robot (the Prototype This! warehouse is on an island on the otherside of the Bay Bridge where, I guess, they cannot get pizza deliery sparking the build). The concepts they came up with have current limitations that could easily be worked around but was interesting none the less.
One was a robot that could follow a course to a destination where the pizza-buyer swipes his credit-card releasing his pizza from the robot another idea was a self-driving car that does the same job. The episoded ended with showing a car driving itself (using GPS and a pre-programmed route) to the destiation (along closed streets with the team in a chase vechile) the car had an incident on a tight turn getting off the Bay Bridge, but otherwise it was interesting to watch.
Again, I'm not sure this idea is practical right now but it showed some promise and who knows what a few more years of development will get, but for the most part I've liked this show.
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