This robot created a “Super Mario Bros” of 100,000 dominoes. mural in 24 hours

A new robot known as the Dominator set a Guinness World Record for placing 100,000 dominoes in just over 24 hours. Created by YouTuber and former NASA engineer Mark Rober, the Dominator is the result of more than five years of work. Rober had the help of two freshmen from Stanford University and a software engineer from the Bay Area to create the. The group programmed over 14,000 lines of code and outfitted it with components like omnidirectional wheels and 3D printed funnels to create what Rober says is a “friendly robot that’s only super good at one thing.” : put up a ton of dominoes really, really fast. “

Facing a professional domino artist, the Dominator used his ability to lay 300 tiles at a time to work about 10 times faster than a human. It took about two hours for the robot to knock down over 9,000 dominoes.

While the Dominator is the face of the project, much of its efficiency comes from a separate sorting mechanism that consists of a Kuka robotic arm and nearly three miles of Hot Wheels tracks. A series of conveyor belts transport the domains by color before the Kuka arm drops them into the appropriate chute. When the Dominator comes to the station for a recharge, the lower platform slides out, instantly loading its 3D printed funnels with all the dominoes it needs to drop 300 at a time. In this way, downtime is reduced to a minimum.

To put his final achievement into context, it would take about a full week for a team of seven qualified domino builders to complete the Super Mario Bros.-like a mural, the Dominator took a little over a day to complete.