At first we thought this autonomous snowplow robot was similar to a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner or its worthy competitor, the ROMI. Digging deeper, we realized that Yuki-taro is much more. The 800-pound robot is guided by GPS along with a couple of video cameras and gorges itself on the snow that's covering your driveway. As it moseys along, it packs all that snow together into two-foot-tall cube-shaped ice turds. The idea is that you'd store away those blocks of ice to cool down your brewskis in the summer, or something.

Yuki-taro is part of a Japanese research project right now, and its creators hope to reduce its size and weight, eventually offering it on the commercial market in five years for around $8,300. But by then, because of that global warming thing, there may not be any more snow in these parts. Hurry up, guys. Anyway, bring the price down to $500, and we'll be signing up for one right away. Oh, and maybe lose that ice turd idea. — Charlie White

Asahi, via Pink Tentacle