A Fully Functional Hackers-Inspired Video Tape Robot

Hackers is one of the few Hollywood movies in history to gain widespread favor with actual computer geeks. Sure, it was cheesy and used some ridiculous graphics in place of actual hacking, but the vibe was right and that was what mattered. It is now so far out of date that it has become obscure, but Hackers retains cult classic status in certain circles. In one memorable scene, a character in the movie gains control of a TV station's video tape loader robot. YouTuber Midwest Cyberpunk managed to replicate the functionality of that robot and the result has a real practical purpose.

The purpose of the robot in the movie was to grab a video tape from a rack and then place it into a player, so the content could be broadcast. It was a bit like a jukebox for video tapes. I have no idea how many TV stations actually used robots like this, but it probably wasn't many when they could have just paid some intern a few dollars an hour instead. But Midwest Cyberpunk was able to find something similar built by Sony, which was used in the broadcast industry and that you can still find used today. Instead of getting one of those or trying to replicate the on-screen robot perfectly, Midwest Cyberpunk chose to take some artistic liberties in order to create a robot that functions in a similar manner.

The tapes shown in the movie weren't VHS, but Midwest Cyberpunk didn't want to bother with anything unusual. Their robot works with standard VHS tapes and a VCR. The robot has a vertical gantry that can pick up a tape from a rack or place a tape on the rack. The robot can also put a tape into the VCR and start playback. Then it can eject the tape and place it back on the rack.

Midwest Cyberpunk doesn't go into much detail about the technical aspects of this robot, but we can see that it uses a hefty stepper motor for the vertical gantry, a motor to drive the tape grippers, and actuators to push the tape out. A custom cyberdeck controls the robot through an ESP32 NodeMCU development board. There doesn't seem to be any feedback telling the robot when a tape finishes, so the robot likely relies on a timer or simple manual activation.

The best part is that this isn't just a replica prop. It could actually be used for broadcastingor archiving tapes. The prototype here only works with a handful of tapes, but that could be expanded to handle much more. Midwest Cyberpunk says that they're happy to discuss options with anyone that has an interest in putting the robot to real use.