Engineering360: "MIT finds lost items with a robotic arm"

I recall that on the market there are devices one attached to your keys or important items and with a simple clap of the hands the lost item beeps so that you can locate it. A fraction of the price of a robot. Now we have these clever youngsters inventing expensive robots to do the same thing. I am sure granny Smith would love this robot if she could recall how to use it.

Is there a good justifiable reason that so much money is being spent on education that we need to reinvent the wheel at higher cost or do we actually need to be so damned lazy and useless as a species. It boggles my mind that these toys are invented for the assumed good of mankind when so many are seeking work. No wonder aliens don't visit earth. They are looking for intelligent life and there is bugger all here on earth.