Chilling in the pool is great, but what a drag to have to get out to grab a cold brew. [Alister] had his eye on a commercial drink float, but the company was out of business. But 3D printing, of course, comes to the rescue in this video, also embedded below.
The payload amounts to four bottles and some snacks. Brushless thrusters allow the bartender to steer the little robot around the pool to deliver libations.
A resin overcoat allows the 3D printed material to float. After the hull and thrusters are done, the rest is pretty simple: an RC receiver and some speed controllers round it out. For festivity’s sake, the boat sports an MP3 player, a water cannon, and a remote-control flagpole.
It looked like fun to drive around a pool. It might not be seaworthy enough for a trip to the ocean, but it would probably be workable on a quiet lake. We don’t know what the service life of the little device will be, but we wonder if you couldn’t sell these to resorts for delivering things to swimmers.
We’ve seen [Alister] print boats before. We thought a hovercraft version of this would be cool until we thought about lifting heavy bottles and messing up swimmer’s hair.
Bonzer! The only possible way that could be improved is to get the water cannon to dispense rum, in pirate mode!
Outstanding suggestion! I’ll add this to the list for future additions…
Proximity sensors and wrist bands. Send drinks to wrist band number 4. Maybe low frequency rf signaling.
Is there an Amusing Alliterative Article Appellation Adventure going on at HaDHQ?
Yes, their AI called Williams was trained on alphabetically sorted word sets.
The flag pole is a very nice touch.
Thanks for sharing my project! I’m thinking of adding some more gadgets to this one, so stay tuned!
And after drinking all that beer you don’t even have to get out of the pool to pee. All problems solved.
You get out of the pool to pee?
For the first one. After several beers it doesn’t matter.
Wonderful!
Suggest a grating to hold the electronics/wiring above the lowest part of the hull and a pump there to get rid of any slosh. Because you know that there’s going to be splashing around this thing and what’s a pirate vessel without a bilge?
Requires the laser alignment gizmo iron man’s suit had that identified the position of hands therefore arms then deployed the suit while in terminal velocity freefall…food for thought.
I could have sworn I’ve seen someone similar in a Sky Mall or Sharper Image catalogue somewhere
“SOMETHING”
OK, as soon as I was this I thought that it would be super cool if this were driven by a Voith Schneider drive system. They’re a cool design used by tug boats to have crazy maneuverability, if they were centrally mounted you would end up with unlimited 3dof control on the water.