I’ve enjoyed Mark Rober’s videos for a while now. They are fun, touch on accessible topics, and have decent production value. But this recent video isn’t sitting right with me
The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU
In it, he talks about a few techniques for how to take down “bad guy drones”, the problems with each, and then shows off the drone tech by Anduril as a solution.
Anduril aims to sell the U.S. Department of Defense technology, including artificial intelligence and robotics. Anduril’s major products include unmanned aerial systems (UAS), counter-UAS (CUAS), semi-portable autonomous surveillance systems, and networked command and control software.
In the video, the Anduril product is a heavy drone that uses kinetic energy to destroy other drones (by flying into them). Quoting the person in the video:
imagine a children’s bowling ball thrown at twice as fast as a major league baseball fastball, that’s what it’s like getting hit by Anvil
This technology is scary for obvious reasons, especially in the wrong hands. What I also don’t like is how Mark Rober’s content is aimed at children, and this video includes a large segment advertising the children’s products he is selling. Despite that, he is promoting military technology with serious ethical implications.
There’s even a section in the video where they show off the Roadrunner, compare it against the patriot missiles, and loosely tie it in to defending against drones. While the Anvil could be used to hurt people, at least it is designed for small flying drones. The Roadrunner is not:
The Roadrunner is a 6 ft (1.8 m)-long twin turbojet-powered delta-winged craft capable of high subsonic speeds and extreme maneuverability. Company officials describe it as somewhere between an autonomous drone and a reusable missile. The basic version can be fitted with modular payloads such as intelligence and reconnaissance sensors. The Roadrunner-M has an explosive warhead to intercept UAS, cruise missiles, and manned aircraft.
Probably on some design stuff. If you look at his videos he never makes anything impressive. Just some mediocre junior tier engineering with good video production.
This video is no different. Backyard Scientist shows up with a functional shockwave blaster. Mark puts some elastics on rocket shaped foam and calls it a day.
I think it’s because Mark wants to interest a young audience rather than building some very complicated stuff little kids wouldn’t be able to do.
Not necessarily. Making a great product would only attract a younger audience more and make the videos far cooler. But that takes a ton of time. Way more than just painting a large cannon and strapping some elastics to it
Mark clearly tries to only deliver a minimum viable product for a single shot rather than an actually functional product.
He falls under the “shittyrobots” engineers that don’t just make shitty robots for fun, but because they can’t actually make non shitty robots which accomplish the desired goal of their video well. Some people such as “I Did A Thing” don’t try to hide it and make it part of the content. Mark is in the twilight zone of pretending he’s engineering complex stuff while not actually doing that.
Dude was a nasa engineer. Just because he doesn’t do the complicated stuff on yt doesn’t mean he’s not capable of doing so. I do wish he did complex stuff though.
Dude was a NASA engineer. This also says more about how low the bar is for NASA engineers than about Mark, as we can clearly see Mark is incapable of good engineering.
As people above have pointed out there are plenty of real engineers making real cool stuff and get views with it. It is not necessary to make a bad robot whatsoever. Hell there’s a reason Backyard Scientist got featured on the thumbnail.
Stuff made here. Tom Stanton. Peter Sripol. Backyard Scientist, James Bruton, Collin Furze, and many more. These people make amazing videos about prototypes that are actually functional and accomplish the goals they set out.
Mark does not meet the list of people who make amazing inventions for their videos that actually work. He makes painted trash that falls apart when touched. He makes shitty robots not because he wants to, but because he can’t make good ones. If any more people need to be triggered, Micheal Reeves also doesn’t meet this list.
Its pretty clear that Mark and Micheal Reeves don’t focus as much on design and iteration so much as the ideas behind their creations. The content formula for their videos is different from the other youtube creators you mentioned. If that style of video isn’t your cup of tea, thats ok.
As for the inventions themselves, I have to disagree. I think some of Mark’s creations are fairly well designed, such as the later versions of the glitter bombs.
They don’t push any limits. They just make fun gadget that works by connecting a Pi or Arduino to some servo, and possibly connect a joystick to it. This is fine for any beginning engineer of course. But they never push any limits. The glitter bomb you mentioned is very similar. A decent engineer can make that in a single day.
Anything created by them can be made by a university student, often a first year one if they have prior engineering experience during their youth.
The other guys are desiging custom hardware, custom electronics, write custom firmware. It’s a lot more than a single input > output https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPXN0QejqM0
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=XPXN0QejqM0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
If you want to see some fucking crazy engineering (and I don’t mean crazy impressive…) one of his variations of his glitter bomb used 4 Samsung phones hidden in a 3d printed enclosure. If you’re ever in a spot where you are building a box and shoving 4 phones inside, you have fucked up.
I mean, he chose them because they already include a camera, mic, battery, gps, and the ability to record and send data to cloud storage without a wifi connection. Yeah, you could individually buy all those components and get them to work, but why bother when you can grab a few $100 phones that do the same thing? Engineering is a much about practicality as it is design and fabrication.
I’m not trying to go up to bat for Mark Rober, I get a little bit of the ick from weaponry videos, too (and the dude clearly doesn’t need my help, anyway). I just think the reaction to him is a bit overblown.
I just checked his Wikipedia page for his credentials. Worked for 9 years at NASA, of which 7 working on the Curiosity rover (yeah, the one that’s on Mars now).
I’d say that’s credentialed enough.
I too wish he did more complex stuff.