Burgertron

The Victorians gave us the Bunsen Burger...

the 20th century saw the advent of Burgermatic...

now, in 2010, we are witness to the dawning of the age of

BURGERTRON

Last weekend we went to visit our boy Kosta in Berkeley, where after one more semester he will graduate with a double major in physics and astrophysics. Definitely the brains of the family, that one.

We caught up with him late Thursday night at Lothlorien Hall (which, as a long-held bastion of vegetarianism in the Berkeley co-op system, seemed an unlikely venue for this sort of activity) Kosta and his friend Nick were doing the final tweaking of Burgertron 2.0.

The Burgertron started as a final project for Nick's Basic Semiconductor Circuits class last semester. Kosta was in on it from the beginning, though, and the two of them collaborated on both the hardware (mostly scrap wood, two old toaster ovens, bicycle chains, lots of little relays, and wire) and software (LabVIEW).

So the idea is, you put a raw hamburger patty on a little metal flap, and the two halves of a bun on another little flap, and then you push the start button on the computer screen. Through the magic of computer programming and electronic gadgetry, the flaps drop to deposit the components onto a conveyor belt which then carries them to the heat units. They broil for the programmed period of time, then continue on to the end of the line where they slide down a ramp and are automatically assembled in the familiar bun-patty-bun configuration.

You MIGHT be thinking, why spend hundreds of hours inventing something that the fast food industry perfected decades ago? And which can be accomplished better and faster with a barbecue grill and a spatula?

Well, you MIGHT be a no-fun party pooper. Kosta says it's worth it just to see people's looks when he wheels the contraption across town in his free-piled jogging stroller (scavenged specifically for the purpose).

"Hey man, is that a TIME MACHINE?" It's a point of pride to be able to garner funny looks in a seen-it-all town like Berkeley.

This week the Burgertron was transported to its new permanent home in Kingman Hall, where it will debut as the guest chef at an upcoming barbecue.

An early trial run, in the physics lab on campus. The young man you see in the video is Nick - Kosta and some other students are the off-camera voices.