The founder of Niwot, Colorado-based company Seidle received a gift from his wife last Christmas—a fireproof safe. Since it was a second-hand item, the safe had been locked by its previous owner, who had forgotten the password. Seidle decided to open the safe himself. After some effort, Seidle and his colleagues DIYed a fully automated robot that operated autonomously and opened the safe in just 15 minutes, which is quite astonishing.
Seidle currently works at SparkFun and has extensive experience in creating gadgets and robots. According to a report by WIRED, the tool invented by Seidle’s team to open the safe cost about $200 in total, which included a $20 motherboard, a $40 motor, an aluminum frame, 3D printed components, and a scale that could connect to the safe’s dial. The password for the target safe could have one million combinations (100x100x100), and if attempted manually at one combination every ten seconds, it would take nearly four months to try all combinations.
Initially, Seidle shortened the time the robot took to try each password to a maximum of four seconds, but this only improved efficiency by one-third. Later, Seidle discovered a trick by exploiting a design flaw in the safe itself; the grooves for the set password were slightly narrower than the others, a difference that was imperceptible to the naked eye. He then had the Safecracker use slight pressure sensitivity to attempt to guess the password. With this breakthrough, the robot was able to open the safe in just 15 minutes.
Seidle stated that while their DIY device was successful, it was limited to this second-hand safe; if it were a higher-end safe, the robot would likely not be able to open it. Seidle encourages robot enthusiasts to improve upon his product through DIY methods, saying, “I don’t know if anyone will replicate my robot, but I want people to get involved and use its existing capabilities to create different models.”
Written by: Weifeng Network
Focusing on robots, drones/cars, a platform that engineers are all concerned about“Robot Network“