After years of being too poor to afford a carousel DVD appliance, we
built Heroine 2200. Heroine 2200 is the ultimate DVD organizing
robot. She stores DVDs in the most intuitive way: in the ultimate DVD
towers.
Heroine 2200 is quite possibly the cheapest yet strongest method of DVD
organizing ever made. Once the initial expense of the sled and crane
were overcome, each tower consumed only $30 of building materials in
2004.
Because of the limited justification and high cost, there is no drive
loading mechanism. Instead, a human loads and stores up to 12 DVDs in a
loading tower and the robot does up to 12 transfers between the low
density loading tower and the high density storage towers.
The number of storage towers is variable and built in a
go-as-you-can-afford-to-pay approach. The storage towers are on the
right and the loading tower is on the left. The handling of disks,
once they are in the loading tower, is entirely up to the robot. The
crane travels horizontally along the top of the towers and the sled
travels vertically on the towers.
THE LOADING TOWER:
THE SLED:
The sled stores and retrieves disk pancakes from the tower.
THE CRANE:
The crane moves the sled between towers and lowers it to the right row.
1280x720
movie of Heroine 2200. 148 MB