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This is Dom.
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He's a friendly little robot
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that's super good at only one thing.
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Setting up a butt-ton of dominos
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really really fast.
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It's taken five years to get to this point
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but according to our initial tests,
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we have hopes that he might be more than
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ten times faster than the fastest human.
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So today we're gonna put him to the test
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going head to head against he world's
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foremost domino expert,
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who unfortunately is a mere human.
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Then we're gonna attempt a
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Guinness world record and he's gonna try
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and fill this entire warehouse
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with a mural
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of a hundred thousand dominos.
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And for context, setting up a domino mural
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that size would take a team of seven
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skilled builders one full week.
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Dom here, is gonna attempt to do it
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by himself in 24 hours.
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Now I know what you're thinking,
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"Big whoop Mark,"
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because as a kid you might have had a toy
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that looked like this.
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Or even this custom robot
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KiwiCo made me that can drop
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twenty dominos in a row.
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So isn't a bit overkill to utilize
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an autonomous robot,
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a half mile of Hot Wheels tracks,
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and a high speed robotic arm?
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And I get it because our designs
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look like this where we were just trying
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to hack a Roomba when we first tried to
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tackle this problem
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exactly five years ago.
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But then pesky details with scale arise
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like for starters, just how much
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100,000 dominos is.
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So the robot will need to come and reload
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at least 1,000 times.
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But how exactly do you reload it?
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And how would it know exactly where
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to drop each domino and what color
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it should be?
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And how do you make it so reliable,
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that it doesn't screw up once
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in a 100,000 drops of a domino?
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A system to reliably tackle issues
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at scales like this is just going to be
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inherently super complex.
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Like ten times more complex
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than my automatic bullseye dartboard,
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which to this point was probably the most
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complicated build on my channel.
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So after failing off and on
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for three years,
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I was doing a Q and A at Makerfaire
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and I told the crowd if anyone wanted
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to help me with the brutal challenge
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to hit me up afterwards.
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And to my absolute delight,
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two freshmen from Stanford
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and a software engineer from
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The Bay Area,
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all took me up on the challenge.
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So I hired them and two years later,
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here we were.
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Now before I show you how it all works,
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I just wanted to put him in a head to head
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competition to see how good he really was.
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And for that we need the undisputed
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heavyweight champion on YouTube
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for all things dominos,
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Lily Hevesh.
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Lily, you are known on YouTube as
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The Queen of Dominos right?
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People do call me The Domino Queen.
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And for very good reason,
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with over 1.2 billion views on
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her channel,
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you've almost certainly seen
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one of her incredible creations
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over her 12 years on the platform.
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She's so good,
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she's even got her own line of dominos
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you can buy in stores.
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Ok, so here's the challenge Lily.
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I want you to set up like 300 dominos
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right now and let's see how long it takes
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a human to do that.
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Ok.
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Clock starts,
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Now.
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I got to do two hands.
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If you need me, Lily,
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just sitting here reading my newspaper.
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For you kids at home a newspaper is like
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a boring ipad made from trees.
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That's actually pretty fast.
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Oh no.
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Disaster, the foibles of being human.
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Ok Lily are ready for this?
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No.
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I've seen enough.
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(Failure to whistle)
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I actually don't know how to whistle.
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This, is the Dominator.
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Oh my god
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Wow
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I love the eyes.
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A good set of googly eyes will go
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a long ways.
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Ok boy, let em down.
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I suck at dominos, Lily,
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but i'm good at engineering which means
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I'm actually really good at dominos.
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We even showed off
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the Dominator doubled-stacked
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the middle row for you.
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That is impressive,
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that is seriously impressive.
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This technique of laying down
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a tile of 300 dominos at once
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was really the key that helped us crack
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the scale and reliability issues.
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And its probably my favorite part about
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the Dominator,
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besides his wiggly tail of course.
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Here's Josh to explain more.
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So these 3D printed funnels here,
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which allow us to drop all 300 dominos
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all at once.
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And the mechanism that drops those into
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the top of this tray
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we'll show that in just a second.
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And if we remove these funnels here
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we can see that the dominos are
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precisely placed in their locations.
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This allows us to place 300 dominos
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exactly where we want them all at once.
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And they don't fall out because of what we
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call the Connect 4 mechanism under here.
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But if we trigger the servo,
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then it slides that Connect 4 tray over
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and drops them all at once
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making for some gratuitous, beautiful
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slow-mo shots.
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And so while this looks very cool,
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obviously dropping from that height
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wouldn't be effective.
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So we lower the whole platform down
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on this ball screw.
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Then set them right on the floor,
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which turned out to be incredibly reliable
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So Dom took the W in round one.
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But now it's time for the endurance round.
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Ok, first one to 10,000 dominos wins.
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Lily, you ready?
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I'm ready.
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Dominator, you ready?
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Start
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Oh my god
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Wow
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I aready failed.
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That's great.
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And to Lily's credit,
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she was actually insanely fast.
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Just not, you know, robot fast.
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So unfair,
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so unfair.
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On top of that she had to handle a very
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large distraction with emotional maturity
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of a 9 year old.
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Yep, I think I'm doing pretty good.
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You're doing very good for a human
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I'll give you that.
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Oh no
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Woah
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No what, no what Lily?
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Get out, Get out
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Aaaaaahhh
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That feels so much faster than
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it probably looks.
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How's Lily doing?
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Tired.
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And so while Lily's output slowed down
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considerably,
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Dom's did not.
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And I should mention we sometimes call him
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Dom but that's just short for his
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legal birth name,
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which as noted before,
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is Dominator.
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Cause you know like
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domino
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Dominator
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whatever, it all works.
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I'm gonna head to the bathroom.
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Oh, Lily has to go to the bathroom.
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I'm human, right?
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Dominator do you have to go
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to the bathroom?
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Didn't think so.
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9,000 perfectly laid dominos in a little
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over two hours.
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Actually 9,000 and 1,
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we got a bonus domino out there in
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the middle of this field.
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May or may not have been on purpose,
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but now we can say that it's over 9,000.
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It was a pretty clear result
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and Lily, of course, was gracious
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in her defeat to the machine overlords.
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So all that was left to do now,
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was to knock em down.
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Yes! That was satisfying.
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So we went head to head with
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the world's foremost domino expert
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and came out on top.
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And now it's time for the real challenge.
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To attempt a Guinness World Record,
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and see how quickly we can fill
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this entire room with a mural,
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of over 100,000 dominos.
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Alright buddy,
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you got the game plan,
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now you just got to get out there
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and execute.
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Godspeed little fella, Godspeed.
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300 dominos down, 102,000 left to go.
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So we're about six hours in
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but more importantly,
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We just got our first Goomba.
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It's beautiful.
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Back to work Dom.
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And the best part of working
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really hard for a few years,
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is that the last 24 hours
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are super relaxing.
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And with that tile placed,
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we are officially half way done.
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With over 50,000 dominos put down,
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and just a little over 12 hours.
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And Dom, woah easy boy,
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just showing no signs of slowing down.
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So this is a good point
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to explain the rest of the robotics system
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It all starts over here
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with the loading station that
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Josh and John Luke spent a lot
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of time optimizing.
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The dominos are loaded by color
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on these conveyer belts
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and then a Kuka robot arm
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grabs them and places them in one of
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300 loading shoots made from 2.7 miles
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worth of Hot Wheels tracks.
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And you could load Dom directly
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with the robot arm,
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but this is much faster because he doesn't
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have to wait,
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he just comes in here to the
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docking station and the lower
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platform slides over so the bottem
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layer of 300 dominos gets loaded up
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all at once.
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And we also had a back up loading system
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using a tray just incase at any point
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the robot arm wasn't working.
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Besides the Hot Wheels tracks,
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there's a ton of 3D printed parts
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throughout the build that we either
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printed ourselves or, if we were in
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a pinch, my friends at MatterHackers
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helped us out.
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So that's the loader,
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now how about the Dominator himself?
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How does Dom know exactly where to go
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in the room to drop a domino?
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So we preprogramed the route for
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all 102,000 dominos.
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So the robot knows exactly where to go
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right from the start.
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Then as we're driving around,
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we use these indoor GPS sensors
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to track the position of the robot
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so it knows roughly where it is
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and then as we get closer the place
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where the dominos need to drop,
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we use these IR cameras that are
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tracking markers on the ground to make
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sure the robot lines up perfectly
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every single time.
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So the vision from the beginning was that
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we could set Dom up
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we could turn off the lights and leave,
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and come back the next morning
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and you've got like a full field
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of dominos set up.
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He could work all night in the dark
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just fine.
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Alright now how bout these
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super cool wheels?
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So these are called omni-wheels
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and they're awesome because they let you
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translate it any direction you want.
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So this is way better than like your car
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where if you need to move a little bit
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to the left or right,
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you have to make like a five point turn.
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So with these guys you can move any
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direction you want to adjust for small
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corrections in the placement
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of the dominos.
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These wheels are powered by these
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clear path, brushless DC server motors.
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These are like the gold standard in terms
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of speed and accuracy.
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And they allow us to slide the robot
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around by even just a couple millimeters
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a time,
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which is super useful when we're trying
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to make real fine adjustments for placing
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the dominos down.
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Now obviously that's just the uppermost
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tip of the iceberg tip.
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But Dom's brain is over 14,000 lines
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of code all from scratch.
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So if you want to go way deeper into
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the technical details I'll
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put a link in the video's description,
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where I'll just put it all in one spot.
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Now back to finishing the second half.
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So the Dominator has been running
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just under 24 hours.
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And this is a bit of a momentous tile here
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It's a me Mario.
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102,300 dominos are on the floor
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succesfully.
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This is the last 300.
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I think this is a moment.
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You guys get back over here.
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Josh and Alex, let's observe it.
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Don't blow this Dom, you got it buddy
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finish strong.
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We got it.
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Just over 24 hours,
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to lay all the dominos.
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Gentlemen
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It feels really fulfilling as an engineer
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to see the design prosses yield results
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like this.
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And speaking of the engineering
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design prosses,
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my month long creative engineering course
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where I teach this process,
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and where you watch me make three builds
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from scratch, and you make
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three creative builds of your own.
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Is once again open for enrollment for
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a bonus Summer session right now.
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So go to
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monthly.com/markrober
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or use the link in the video description.
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And I'll see you in class.
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So now with everything set up,
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the final step was to knock em down.
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You can see John loading in the Mario
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pipes because they were going to be our
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trigger mechanism.
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The way that works is we've got four
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Hot Wheels cars glued to the bottom of
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this platform that rides in these
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parallel Hot Wheels tracks.
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Then you slap a green sliding shell on top,
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and a motor at the end
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pulls the cart along the tracks with
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a string.
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Then the shell contacts the lever arm
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at each pipe like this,
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which causes them to roll forward
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down the ramp hopefully into the dominos.
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Ok now I'm nervous.
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I wasn't nervous, now I'm nervous.
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OK
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3
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2
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1
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Go
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Yes! Two!
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Three!
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Four!
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Five!
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Oh my gosh
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Got em wooo!
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Yes!
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Awesome!
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Holy cow!
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Wooooaaah!
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Oh my gosh
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And in the end Dom was 50 times faster
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than the skilled domino builder
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and he got himself a world record
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to show for it.
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Although to be fair to us organisms,
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It was in the non-human category.
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And at that point after five years,
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we were just so relieved to be done,
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we got a little carried away carried away
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celebrating the champ with
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an appropriate sendoff.
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Six year old me would be so stoked
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to know that I would eventually build
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a robot that could set up all the dominos
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for me.
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So if you want the same feeling of making
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things with your hands to do cool things,
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but you don't want to wait 35 years.
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Then my friends at KiwiCo have got
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the answer.
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In fact, this is an actual mini version
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of the Dom I designed together with them
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just for this video.
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I mean how awesome and adorable is that.
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He's like the protégé.
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The Dom Jr.
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They got an incredible team of designers
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that work on each project and honestly
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if I wasn't making YouTube videos
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I think I would apply to be on their team.
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Then all the concepts are contested
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and then its delivered right to your door
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every month,
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so you can foster your creativity
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and make your abilities in a fun
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and natural way.
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So for example this domino machine box,
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inside you've got all the supplies
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you need to put it together.
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You've got simple instructions.
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And then a booklet with more info
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like a Q and A with someone you might know.
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And this is the tinker crate line
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But they've got eight different
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subscription lines each catering to
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a different age group and topic.
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So if you want to support my channel
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and feed your brain while having
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fun at the same time,
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go to kiwico.com/roberdomino
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or use the link in the video description
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to get an excusive offer.
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so thanks to KiwiCo for being so great
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to work with, thanks to Dom
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and Dom Jr. for just dominating,
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and of course thanks to you for watching.
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What do we do now?
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We're about to clean it up.
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Oh there we go, a cleanup robot.