The RopeBot!

Everett Bradford had a small problem. After putting up a rope in a tree several years ago as part of a ropes course, he decided to take it down, but found that the tree had grown over it. This meant that without climbing up to the location of the rope and putting himself in danger, it was going to stay in place.

Bradford, though, had another idea and instead designed a small radio-controlled robot to climb the rope and cut it down for him.

The 3D-printed robot works by scaling up a rope using a motor and gear assembly held tight with a rubber band. When it reaches the top, it saws the rope with a razor blade on a crank assembly, cleverly set up to keep the blade off the rope until sawing starts.

Unfortunately, success also means that the robot took a long fall after cutting itself down, but as seen around 5:45 in the video below, it was able to be resurrected for another cutting job.