MrRobotics

Fascinating article. Keep up the work, Matthias!

throwaboat, you clearly get it. I'm building in this space and would love to talk. Email's in my bio.

This is the sort of reasoning needed to solve the ARC AGI benchmark.

Once robotics develops further, it would be interesting to have an organization that uses small mobile farming robots to tend gardens in people's yards and produce fruits and vegetables for personal or local consumption.

This could enable people during certain times of the year to eat food that is local, fresher, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly.

I know a lot of people that have personal gardens but don't grow much since it's too time consuming for them.

You’re right that fans don’t affect humidity and are less effective in extreme heat.

However, there are many places such as garages, airplane hangers, and large warehouses where AC is impractical due to a lack of insulation and the need to open large doors to move vehicles or goods in and out.

In those environments, fans are about the best cooling solution you can get. One big issue with traditional fans though is that they just point in an single direction or oscillate back and forth regardless of the location of the user.

The energy savings from spot cooling with fans can be incredible compared to AC. A garage AC unit consumes ~1300W while a 20” fan consumes about ~150W.

My startup, Following Fan, has built a person-tracking 20” fan that uses computer vision to automatically stay pointed at the user as they move around. This technology provides the location agnostic benefits of AC with the energy consumption of fans.

Currently, I go to the gym 5 days a week for about 60-90 minutes per session. My workouts generally consist of cardio for a warmup and then free weights and Olympic style weightlifting. It has a great ROI.

I used to train 10+ hours a week almost exclusively on weightlifting when I was competing frequently, but over the last year I’ve spent less time lifting to have more time to work on my startup.

Cool DIY guide to make a smarter fan!

I was playing around with upgrading my own fan last year and ended up adding person-tracking capabilities so that the fan automatically stays pointed at me when I move. I ended up started a company, Following Fan, that builds and sells these tracking fans!

That is a good point. Large ceiling fans are one solution and probably superior when there are a lot of people. However, Following Fan is more efficient when there are not a lot of people since it will be less than 1/10th the cost of a 14' ceiling fan, use less energy, and provide more focused airflow to a specific person.

Thanks for the thoughts. We think it could be especially useful in places such as warehouses, auto shops, and garages where there is no air conditioning but get extremely hot in the summer.

Additional information: Person detection is performed using a camera integrated into the front and center of the fan grill and a computer next to the motor in the fan head. We will be starting a Kickstarter campaign in a few weeks to raise funds for mass production with the early bird Kickstarter pricing starting at $199.