The Yahara Journal 2020 edition

THE ROBOTIC ARTIST: A SLEEP-DEPRIVED MORNING IN THE LAB Sam Breese

The young man pulled his badge from the retractable lanyard and swiped it in front of the electronic door lock. The little LED on the front changed from red to green, and the black box let out a small buzz. The young man let go of the badge and it zipped back to its home on his hip. Stepping through the door and taking a sip of bitter, black coffee from his metal Contigo thermos, he scanned the shadow-cast lab. Light poured in from the tall windows of the second-floor hallway above. Sometimes, when tour groups would pass by and peer in through those windows, he felt like a goldfish swimming around in a little glass jar, there only for people’s amusement. He let out a yawn, took another big swig of coffee from his thermos, and flicked on the light switch beside him. The fluorescent lights flickered momentarily, then suddenly burst to life, dispelling the darkness draped about the room. The floor was a dull gray color with a shiny gloss coating that brightly reflected the overhead lights. Scattered throughout the room were large, sturdy workbenches with thick wooden tops, each of which had an aggressively fluorescent green vice bolted to the corner and heavy metal drawers that opened to reveal wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers, tape measures, calipers, pliers, and any other tool a young aspiring engineer could dream of. Walking to his bench, he hefted the back-breaking textbooks inside his backpack onto the wooden top with a dull thud.

As usual, he was the first person in the lab and had been the last one to leave the night before. Pulling his laptop from his bag, he let out another yawn, took another sip of coffee, and wiped the sleep from his baggy eyes. He lazily drifted his head from side to side, examining all the half-finished projects in the room, as his old brick of a computer took its time starting up. Between each workbench were large aluminum tables. The tables were an aesthetically pleasing shade of burnished silver and the tabletops were enclosed with rigid, transparent, plastic panels.

Trapped inside the see-through cages were small electric conveyors, laser sensors with long black wires, and red pneumatic tubing hooked up to air cylinders. Each tabletop cell had something unique. In one, there was a large round table designed to rotate, indexing parts to precise positions. Another had a hand-built metal tower with deburring tools strapped to the top. One was filled with Starburst candy and a vacuum sealer that packaged them into small plastic baggies. Each cell had one thing in common though, the centerpiece of it all – the robot. All the other equip25