Slashdot Mirror
Robotic Massage, Anyone?
Migraineman writes "These folks have built a small robot designed to walk around on your back. The website includes a short video of the machine roaming around. There's another that's suspended from the ceiling and performs 3-D solid mapping of the person beneath. Warning - the website contains 'artsy' stuff, and doesn't include technical tidbits. Dang."
It doesn't matter if the idea is even as stupid as this... *ahem*. I all for anything that makes my life easier with robotics. Bring on the robot that walks around in my mouth cleaning my teeth!
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Make Love not [Browser] War!
Now that you've said the page looks 'Artsy', all of their various pictures have taken on a mysteriously phallic quality.
I mean seriously, look at the picture of the Morphotheque
It Can't be just me. Maybe it's what I'm drinking.
On a more serious note, it's interesting to see art and science start to mix more and more in recent years. Seems that technology, especially robotics, has gone the full circle. I mean, in publications such as Astounding from the Forties and Fifties had "outrageous" desings of humanoid robots performing all kinds of tasks and interactions - then science took over and designed the ugly montrosities that grace our car factiories today.
And now it seems that robots hold a place both functionally and aesthetically - seen both here and in recent events such as the Robot competition mentioned on slashdot a few weeks back.
Just my random rambling.
At least thats what I read when I saw the subject line. Then I tried to figure out what the hell this has to do with robots walking on you....
:(
I've actually seen a hydro chamber- it's got two sheets of really thick plastic- you lie in between them, and programmed jets move over your body, recycling water. It's very very good... just not yet affordable
that thing is hardly heavy enough to put enough pressure on for some real muscle stimulation, this might be a good thing since it can't really figure out how much pressure it should be applying (by asking you if it's too much or not enough). also there are some serious health hazards if you massage the wrong way. for example in the photo it clearly shows the thing walking across the spine, massaging the spine directly is a well known no-no.
people don't pay thousands of dollars to go through a, say, swedish massage course to learn how to operate a tank tread robot that walks on your back.
But it's a LARGE investment. I mean, really large investment - one that you cannot easily hide from other people either.
On the other hand, in Japan Massage Chairs are very popular. I don't see why one would go through the trouble with a robot since those chairs actually do a darn good job at massaging (no it's not the vibrational type - these has wheeled "knockers" that does the massaging).
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Come on, 165 grams is nothing. There is no way that would be enough pressure at all. Hardly a replacement for a human massage.
My cockatiel (little bird with a crest) weighs 120grams and he is nothing!
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
It is a far stretch to label these as massage robots. A more appropriate term would be TickleBots. They apply no real therapeutic muscle stimulation. Their sensations are described as "light tickling" and "fondling".
Although, mapping the contours of the body is interesting. Combine that with an expert system and a robotic head that can apply friction, point pressure, rolling and spreading motions with various degrees of pressure and you have a real massage robot. Add head, cold, and therapeutic EMS and you could put me out of business. (Wait, I'm already out of business...)
Brett Johnson CMT