offbeat

Who needs a humanoid to pick up after you when you can suspend an AI-powered claw from cables near your ceiling?

Your new robot servant doesn't have to look anything like a person or walk on two legs. In fact, it might just be a claw that hangs from the ceiling instead.

That’s the future envisioned by Nathaniel Nifong, founder of Neufangled Robotics, and its Stringman robot . Put simply, Stringman is an AI-equipped claw suspended from four strings running through the corners of a room (up to 10 meters diagonally). Two motorized anchors adjust the lengths of the strings to move the claw around the room, from ceilings up to 4 meters high down to the floor to pick stuff up.…