Tackling a long flight of stairs is gruelling enough when you’re empty-handed, but having to climb step after step while carrying something heavy? Mankind wasn’t designed to endure such torture, so thankfully we’ve invented something so we don’t have to. The folks at Akihabara News in Tokyo spotted this robotic stair-climbing dolly at a train station that makes hauling heavy boxes up a flight of stairs impossibly easy.
The robo-dolly’s unique mix of pivoting wheels and tank treads lets it transition between floors and stairs with minimal effort on the part of the operator, and its cargo platform can be raised and lowered to maintain a perfect centre of gravity at all times to minimise the effort. The only question remaining is whether or not the operator can ride it back down those stairs once those packages are delivered. [Akihabara News]