On the Gripping Hand

eek_the_kat writes "The Sensor Fusion Project at Ishikawa Hashimoto Laboratory has developed a high speed visual feedback system called SPE-256. It allows the robot to track fast randomly moving objects and grasp them (movies here). The applications seem endless! I have seen many robot mpegs as of late, many courtesy of /., but these have to be some of the coolest I have ever come across. A must see."

Comments

Please... Let's get it out of the way...

[Michael's a Jerk!]

No Wank Jokes please. You're not funny.

Re:Please... Let's get it out of the way...

[Millbuddah]

Awwww..... but the applications of this technology towards the 21st Century G.I. Joe with Kung Fu Grip(TM) could be revolutionary!!

Ironing

[Anonymous Coward]

Still cant do the ironing though!

Or the hovering, or washing plates, or .....

Re:Ironing

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, that's what marriage is for.

Site is Slashdotted - and no comments!

[Michael's a Jerk!]

Here's the shameless Google Mirror

A human being recognizes external environment by using many kinds of sensory information. By integrating these information and making up lack of information for each other, a more reliable and multilateral recognition can be achieved. The purpose of Sensor Fusion Project is to realize new sensing architecture by integrating multi-sensor information and to develop hierarchical and decentralized architecture for recognizing human beings further. As a result, more reliable and multilateral information can be extracted, which can realize high level recognition mechanism.

Note that the site is mostly pictures, which explained why it went down so quickly. There's almost no decent text at all :-(

Re:Site is Slashdotted - and no comments!

[kamukwam]

The site is reachable again. They fixed it quite fast!

Re:Site is Slashdotted - and no comments!

[cilix]

Any reason the link you posted was to an IP? Seems like a crazy thing to do, since it could well lead to the google mirror being /.ed. That link presumably bypasses all their load balancing stuff.

Not a biggy, just wondering if there was a reason that wasn't immediately obvious. (maybe that is the exact url that google gives out, which would be silly of them).

Re:Site is Slashdotted - and no comments!

[jpmkm]

Uh... maybe the IP address is the address of a load balancer. With such a large volume of traffic as google I imagine actual load balancing equipment would be much better than some kind of round-robin dns system. In any case, I'm sure they know what they are doing.

Re:Site is Slashdotted - and no comments!

[Anonymous Coward]

uh... how the fuck is the parent informative but mine is offtopic? stupid fucks.

How fast

[kamukwam]

It seems that I can't reach the website, but I wonder how fast things can go if the robot is still able to catch them?

Maybe we could see the first robots competing in sports (except for chess) in the next few years?

Re:How fast

[Harlow_B_Ashur]

Got a look at two of the clips.

I would describe the speed as on the order of 1/3 the speed of a dog being teased with a tennis ball.

And the sequence looked about the same; the robot hand follows the ball back and forth just like a dog a then lunges out to grab it when it sees its opportunity.

Re:How fast

[chendo]

Why not chess? Give them 30 seconds per side for a whole game with physical clocks and see how they fare ;)

I've seen real life chess games with 5 seconds on each clock. Pieces flew everywhere, player's other hand was always on the clock, etc.

Re:How fast

[kamukwam]

Sorry, maybe my comment was not clear. I meant that in chess computers already can compete with and beat humans. In all other sports like football, baseball etc. it may be possible now in the next few years.

Re:How fast

[Anonymous Coward]

Not very. It looks very shaky and unsure of itself.

Re:How fast

[Yokaze]

You mean something like Robocup mentioned previously on Slashdot?

I have no problems reaching the site. Actually, it loads quite fast, I dare to say. So, maybe the connection between the US and Japan is saturated :).

Re:How fast

[Anonymous Coward]

Got a look at two of the clips.

I would describe the speed as on the order of 1/3 the speed of a dog being teased with a tennis ball.

And the sequence looked about the same; the robot hand follows the ball back and forth just like a dog a then lunges out to grab it when it sees its opportunity.
>
>

Another thing if you noticed, the motion of the ball on the stick *WAS NOT* random. It was basically back and forth.

You could kick the ball around and the dog would still track it.

Re:How fast

[batobin]

The motion back and forth is non-random, plus the guy stops to let the machine grab the object.

Back, forth, back, forth, back, forth, stop, wait for grab. machine grabs ball.

I dunno. It just seems like cheating to me. I'm not very impressed.

Coolest thing? Must see huh?

[netsharc]

You must be feeling pretty smug, being able to see those "cool" videos, and then teasing us about it.. bastard. ;)

Police Bots

[Anonymous Coward]

A tip for criminals if you get chased by a Police Bot:

Don't run randomly, run in a definate pattern.

--
Pr0n: getting too much?

"eek the cat"

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

eek_the_kat writes :

Looks like the poster had a direct experience with one of those robot graspers.

It's dead, Jim

[Anonymous Coward]

The site is slashdotted - posting the google cache is a public service.

Or do you think you know more then the moderators? Their smart enough to think for themselves.

Re:It's dead, Jim

[Dthoma]

"Or do you think you know more then the moderators?"

I probably don't know more in general than the moderators, but I'd say I know more about moderation than the moderators. I've seen a "Slashdot is gay" troll modded up to (3, Insightful). I've seen a Matrix Reloaded spoiler modded up to 4; ditto article text trolls. I've seen countless curt though otherwise insightful comments modded down to (-1, Flamebait). I've seen driveby moderations of controversial comments and I've been the victim of a rogue moderator who hit five or six of my comments with Overrated moderations. I've seen trollish pro-Windows and pro-Linux rants with bad spelling and grammar modded up to 2 or 3. I've seen a repost of the "Gentoo Linux Zealot translator" modded up to 4. I've seen posts that do nothing but suck up to the moderators get a score of 5 with Interesting or Insightful moderations. People getting the first or second post have been hit with -1, Redundant. The list goes on and on.

Please don't try to tell me that the moderators know what the hell they're doing. I've seen too many examples of it being perverted. The M1 system is fundamentally broken:

• People get unequal numbers of points
• Moderators are randomly chosen from the /. population
• There are random intervals of time between M1 opportunities
• The sheep effect: latter moderations of a comment generally duplicate that of the first
• Overrated and Underrated: why?
• Ridiculously easy to subvert
• Ridiculously widely subverted
• Can't handle large crapfloods

So, no, I don't think the moderators are smart enough to think for themselves.

Worse, still, apparently CmdrTaco himself refuses to fix the trolls. He says himself in the FAQ that he has no plans to make Underrated or Overrated M2'able, or to stop the editors from having more mod points, or to just give everyone more mod points, or anything else which could help the system. His changes have just served to obfuscate the system; hiding "Overrated" and "Underrated" from the "Score: X, Modifier" text, using percentages to show total moderations and keeping the system for selecting and removing moderators wrapped up in a pile of unreadable Slash code: don't tell me it's not unreadable, since I have a copy of the "overhauled" Slash 2.2.6 Perl code, and it's buried in subfolder upon subfolder with a dozen different types of files.

And what will happen now? I'll no doubt be slapped with a (-1, Offtopic) or (-1, Troll) by those very same moderators the parent post is defending, which serves to reinforce my point. The moderation system and the moderators themselves are horrendously broken and no one is willing to do anything about it; the users are too apathetic and moronic, the trolls are too busy trying to further demonstrate the stupidity of it and the head honchos are burying their heads in the sand or attacking other innocents with bitchslaps to compensate for their bruised egos. Just beneath the seemingly successful surface of moderation lies a horrible seething, teeming mass of gleeful trolls, random users and vindictive editors clawing at each other. Is there a way out? Yes, but unfortunately there is little you can do about it. The only people who can really make an immediate difference are the site coders, but they're too far removed from it to noticce what's going on. You can try to help by no longer moderating - M2 instead. If enough people do this then maybe it might just make them sit up and notice.

I hope you appreciate the salient points I have made. Thank you for taking the time to read this post and moderating me "Insightful".

Re:It's dead, Jim

[KDan]

Why did this get modded down? +1 funny I say :-P

Daniel

Re:It's dead, Jim

[rixster]

I once posted to what was known as "the thread of death", which was a big hoohah about this kind of thing. It became very obvious very quickly that someone was moderating every post down to -1 with unlimited mod points - even though at the time the FAQ stated that this would never have happened. Eventually, someone fessed up that the eds did have unlimited mod points and that they were just trying to keep the flow on topic - but my card was marked with "Do not allow to mod again" and since that day I never have..... Let's see how long this post lasts as well, eh ??

Re:It's dead, Jim

[Bunji X]

What could really fix M1 is making it non-anonymous, like K5. I think it would at least remove some of the problems with stalkers.

Re:It's dead, Jim

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution to bad moderation is to make each moderation a fractional vote. Instead of one moderator being able to increment of decrement a score with a single vote, it might take 5, 10, or 20 votes to move the score. If moderation is important enough to implement, it should err on the side of accuracy.

Using multiple votes to increment/decrement means the score of a post becomes an average, instead of jumping around to the beat of an often twitchy, immature, and vengeful pool of moderators.

I was reading /. when the moderation and karma were introduced. Been reading since '97 or '98.
Moderation and karma just seem to be a thing for the simpletons to play around with. Like having some "dummy knobs" they used to put on TV's that people could play around with so they would get the feeling they're doing something important.

This underscores how nerds aren't really good with people. Too messy. If you're going to implement a system that allows some 13 year old the power to censor with one vote, guess what he's gonna do? Duh! He's going to have some fun. You smooth that out and have multiple votes per point, the screwballs will get averaged out of the equation.

Let me repeat. Your system gives every voter the power to censor. Voting creates an instant reward in the form of change in score and becomes associated with whatever emotion the moderator is feeling at the time. The system is getting votes from the brain stem. Might as well have a "hungry" or "sex" vote in there to

Re:It's dead, Jim

[Paradise Pete]

Overrated and Underrated: why?

Overrated is useful for those times when, say, some silly comment gets moderated as insightful. Underrated (while admittedly less important) is useful for a normal post that gets moderated as flamebait or troll.

Car Security

[mothrathegreat]

I want one of these hooked up to my car alarm to rip the carjacker's nuts off.

Re:Car Security

[bishopi]

I want one of these hooked up to my car alarm to rip the carjacker's nuts off.

I was actually thinking one robot hand to grip the skull, and apply appropriate movements of the skull to allow a second hand (Johnny Scissorhands variety) to perform a random action from a shortlist - eg :

a) Slash throat
b) Remove eyes
c) Pierce windpipe
d) Tear nuts off and feed to criminal

The possibilities are endless!

Ian

Re:Car Security

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you assume that he would be a he (i.e. with nuts)? I'm sure $exyGrl (or whatever her name is), the only girl on slashdot, will be very annoyed.

Re:Car Security

[Sevn]

$exyGrl is actually a bored 56 year old plumber
from upstate newyork with a huge beergut and a love
for wearing women's lingerie. There are no real
women on the net. It's a conspiracy.

"The Gripping Hand"

[Old Man Trouble]

I'm rather sure there are vast amounts of experts around here.

Re:"The Gripping Hand"

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody can help you if you are an asshole, Old Man Trouble.

Karate Kid

[Microbrain]

This would make such a cool bug catching device :)

scary stuff

[odyrithm]

so how long untill honda stick this kind of technology in ASIMO and it goes super fast ninja style on everyones arses? just a thought.. it is scary just how fast it is and this is just the initial stages.

Another VLSI breakthrough

[Rxke]

Seems like the days off CCD are numbered... this system uses VLSI instead of CCD, much easier to produce and integrate on a chips, heck, it IS the same technology they use to produce chips. Digital camera's are bound to reduce in price thanks to VLSI, already you can buy professional digital camera's using this technology, for an unheard of price. On the topic of this robot thingy itself: think some NASA scientist are going ballistic if they see this, they're also studying on this, but the results are A LOT slower. (they say it's due to the admittetly extraordinary complicated maths/ volume of calculations involved, guess they'll have to rethink some of these claims) Boy oh boy, what they do not show on the video's, is the size of the computer controlling it, they claim is fairly integrated, but, it's always easy to rig a puppet on a string demonstration, where a CrayII runs the show, behind the curtains...

Re:Another VLSI breakthrough

[deepchasm]

This system uses VLSI instead of CCD

Erm VLSI just means putting lots of stuff on one chip (Very Large Scale Integration). Do you mean "CMOS instead of CCD"?

(more detailed explanation)

The increased framerates possible using this technology, rather than CCD, probably help when doing fast motion detection as the robot in the article is doing.

Re:Another VLSI breakthrough

[Rxke]

Erhmmmm... exactly, me bad. /sips coffee/ 'n it's indeed the increased framerates that seem to be the major influence there.

Shameless Matrix reference

[gringer]

What are you saying? When I use SPE-C, I can catch bullets?

What I'm saying, is that when you're ready, you won't have to.

Re:Shameless Matrix reference

[Cylix]

No gringer,

What I'm saying, is when that time comes, you won't have to.

(because you will probably dead from the all the rat tat tat of the urban terrorists uzi emptying into your chest)

Re:Shameless Matrix reference

[MTWZZ]

With this technology it should be possible.
On the other hand.. bullets travel pretty fast and creating
a shockabsorber capable of actually "catching" the
bullet would be nearly impossible.

I covered this last year

[Goon Number 1]

Here.. "It looks like high contrast items are needed for the tracking system to work optimally, but a combination of sonar overlayed with ccds and IR would likely make that less of an issue. It appears that vison is done through a video camera that tracks the moving object, and in turn controls the arm. Also, interesting reflex action with the thumb serving to close the hand once contact is made. Hmm, as I watch more of the videos I'm less and less impressed, It looks like the handler is actually all but feeding the objects to the arm, not unlike teaching a kid to catch a ball by placing it in their hands. That's a shame really." (Edited for spelling)

Re:I covered this last year

[jwdb]

I agree for some of those videos, but in "hand-arm.mpeg", for instance, as soon as he holds the block
still for a second, the arm distinctly reaches out and grabs it. What I'm curious about is what causes
the arm to stop simply following the object and actually try to grab it.

Jw

Re:I covered this last year

[Paradise Pete]

as soon as he holds the block still for a second, the arm distinctly reaches out and grabs it. What I'm curious about is what causes the arm to stop simply following the object and actually try to grab it.

I think you answered your own question.

Re:I covered this last year

[jwdb]

Yes, in the instance that I gave as soon as it stopped moving, the arm grabbed it. But is that the only factor that causes it to try and grab? It would be less useful if it could only grab objects that didn't move... Jw

impressive

[a8f11t18]

to some it might not look like much, but this
was quite impressive IMO.. things are indeed
moving forwards in the field of robotics, and who
knows maybe we WILL see human-like robots in our
lifetime, if only as walmart clerks and the likes :D

Re:impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

Walmart already has robot clerks. You'll see it whenever you enter their store.

Is it real?

[NemesisStar]

First up, hooray for me I managed to get to the site before it got slashdotted.

Ok, now that I'm done with that, am I the only one that's dubious as to whether this is real or not? Admittedly I've only inspected the videos and not checked out the rest of the site, but it looks to me as though a lot of those moves can be programmed in and "acted" out by the object.

The best example of this is the handshake. Notice how the hand is not even in the right position to SHAKE a hand until near the end when the hand rotates 90 odd degrees (so it looks like a hand that could possibly be shaken) and then the human hand moves in nice and slowly. Any old dolt can shake a fake hand, I'll bet the robot hand doesn't give half as firm of a handshake as my little brother. :)

It even looks as though the robot shakes the hand one more time than the human expects.

I'm sure that they've made leaps and bounds into robotic hands, but I can't help but suspect that they're playing it up for more than it's worth.

Re:Is it real?

[evanism]

I suspect the dude was more concerned about his hand being torn off or crushed like putty !!

Re:Is it real?

[BooRadley]

How does the robot arm locate the object in a 3 dimensional space, using only one eye?

The "eye" is really a high-speed sensor for a system of computers. The computers make calculations based on the fixed location of the camera and the variable, but known location of the robotic hand to determine the location in 3D space of the target. Then the target is stationary past a certain threshold time, the hand reaches out to grab it.

The computer array constantly updates the position of the arm and hand to try and match the location of the target, and that's where you get the illusion of human movement.

The human-like hand on the end of this arm is probably for the psychological benefit of investors, who would probably shit their pants at the sight of a high speed robotic claw grasping things dangled in front of it.

Re:Is it real?

[Rxke]

Had the same thoughts, generally. But reading the various textsnippets, they seem honest (yea, who can tell) the reason for the 'extra handshake' might be their implementation of a calculation trick (smart) that calculates how to move in the opposite direction BEFORE movement is completed, some kind of seeing ahead, figuring out what to do after the thing it is actually doing (wow, sounds non sensical, i know) Also, they use a virtual layer around objects, like if you have that cube, it calculates a virtual bigger cube around it, and follows that, after a while, it goes in for grasping, into the direction of the virtual cube, easier to follow i guess, and then it 'fine-tunes' for the real thing. But still... that handshake looked really fishy, esp. the 90 degree rotation....

Re:Is it real?

[Planesdragon]

How does the robot arm locate the object in a 3 dimensional space, using only one eye?

I'd be more impressed if they used two cameras to simulate "depth perception", myself. I have yet to hear of a setup that used stereoscopic vision.

As to your question, try covering one eye (you good eye, too!), picking up a spoon, and then trying to touch it to something in three-space. It's not as hard as some would have you believe, and I suspect it won't be as hard for a computer to pick it up, either.

Re:Is it real?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the origonal poster means is without knowing the size of the object, how does the robot know where it is. (As everyone knows the sun is one foot in diameter and 32 miles away.)

I think it's safe to assume they programmed the system to only accept one ball size. I.e. if you put in a larger or smaller ball instead the robot would get a false z co-ord but correct x&y. (obvoiusly the co-ord system would be relative to the workcell not the camera but you know what i mean.)

Re:Is it real?

[zmooc]

I think the hand is just a bad example; nobody'd like to get a firm handshake from a robot... it's scary, you know. I think we'll never shake hands with robots - especially not when they look like robots and have metal hands.

When you look at the avoiding-video, it's very clear the behavior is preprogrammed; the hand moves when the object comes at clearly visible range from the hand. It has to be - you somehow have to tell a robot what is has to do and therefore it'll always look preprogrammed. But that doesn't really matter, I think. The whole thing doesn't really matter... it's just image recognition on a really fast cluster. What does matter is that it's possible now. What's also possible but not clearly demonstrated in this video, it identification of objects (in this video clearly a high contrast is necessary). Just add those two up, put it on Honda's dancing robot and you've got a robot that can play just about any sport:) Or catch criminals...

Re:Is it real?

[zmooc]

When picking up a spoon, you can feel the object it's lying on. Try putting a pretty tall object on a flat surface and look at the top from the side on a distance with a stretched arm so you can just reach it. Now don't look at the flat surface but just at the top of the object (as if it was somewhere in the air without any point of reference to help you - like the robot). Try to fetch it. It's a lot harder now.

In the more advanced examples it did use stereoscopic vision. Look at the one where it repeatedly catches a ball. The same for the video where it catches a ball which falls vertically. Only in the tracking-examples it did use a single camera if I recall correctly.

Re:Is it real?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do a google search on optical flow and shape from motion.

Basicly you can calculate how the pixels in the image change with time. From that you can extrapolate 3d data. If you can assume the camera is stationary it makes easier.

Re:Is it real?

[ecarlson]

> But still... that handshake looked really fishy, esp. the 90 degree rotation....

To me it looks like the robot arm was programmed to go into handshake mode (rotate 90 degrees, and get ready to track up and down) when it sees the human hand moving up and down. It didn't look fishy at all.

Also, according to the block diagram, there is a second video camera, but I don't know if it was used to aid 3D object location.

Re:Is it real?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does the robot arm locate the object in a 3 dimensional space, using only one eye?

There are ways of doing this, ways that your brain uses as well: focal length, perspective geometry, tactile and visual feedback.

I think they're using the last one there. They move the arm until it looks like it's in the right place.

Re:Is it real?

[drinkypoo]

Actually, there has been quite a bit of work on this subject. There has in fact been a fair amount of success in determining the geometry of three dimensional objects with a single camera based on a combination of their changing aspect during rotation and their relationship to their background. Unfortunately IANAMathematician like my friend Adam, who buys a shitload of books on the subject. He's a game programmer type who's seriously into physics and math (same thing, just that one's applied and involves the real world, and the other one is masturbation any time you're not using it for physics where you have real world constraints.) :) Actually I have nothing but respect for mathematicians, my brain simply doesn't want to deal in numbers. Sigh.

But the point is, if you know something about your background, and you have some time to study the object under rotation, you can learn quite a bit about its three dimensional properties. I would assume that then you would build a map of the object that includes not only geometry but also how sure you are about various portions of it, and then the arm will attempt to grasp it by the portions which it is fairly certain it has properly identified. I would assume that the camera information will also include the relationship of object to arm, which will provide more positional information. The tactile feedback system then allows the arm to grab it even with an incomplete understanding of the object.

Now the trick is to do texture recognition (not just mapping for reproduction but actual determination of what something is) in order to make a guess about how hard you can grab it. That way you can grab both bricks and kittens. :)

Re:Is it real?

[mtec]

>>nobody'd like to get a firm handshake from a robot... it's scary, you know.

But what if you just sold the robot a used car? How else could you close the deal?

Re:Is it real?

[drinkypoo]

Now that I have watched the videos I am even more sure that this is what they are doing. Note how they move the object all over the place before the arm seems to be interested in grabbing it, though it does move around, further lending credence to my suggestion that it's using itself as reference.

This is especially apparent in the handshake demo, in which the man moves his hand in two directions.

Re:Is it real?

[dforsey]

Yes, but it is basically a 2D process.... look at all the motion of the object being grasped, it's all in a single plane.

I'd guess that most of the matching is being done in 2D, and grasping might be initiated when sensors in the hand itself contact the object.

Pretty amazing behaviour notwithstanding.

Re:Is it real?

[crisco]

The videos here look much more 'real' and not so pre-planned.

The 1ms page also has some good video, although I might still question the square / circle demo, as it might just as well keep the circle out of the field of view of the camera. Anyway, this page explains that they are achieving 1ms response time by integrating simple image processing with the photodetection circuitry to elimate having to wait for an entire frame from the CCD.

Re:Is it real?

[plierhead]

There is no spoon

Re:Is it real?

[algernon7]

Your sig has a vowel in it.

Just thought you should know.

Fishing

[jabbadabbadoo]

Well, once they get out a waterproof version, I'll program one to catch fish. Yum, yum. Can't wait.

Re:Fishing

[dtldl]

1. Develop high speed tracking and grasping robot 2. Create water proof version 3. ????? 4. Sell to pr0n company and Profit!!!!!

Is it real?

[PhunkySchtuff]

It looks like the camera is doing some pretty funky location detectiion - in 3D.
I could only see one camera in their schematics and in all the videos.
How does the robot arm locate the object in a 3 dimensional space, using only one eye?
Other than that, it looks very cool...
-k

Realize its full potential...

[Anonymous Coward]

The applications seem endless!

But what happens when you put the Power Glove on it?

I love the Power Glove. It's so bad...

Re:Walmart Security

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this comment always on the bottom of the comment-list???

Looks familiar...

[BenPollinger]

This looked familiar - it's not so new, as it was on BoingBoing last October

http://boingboing.net/2002_10_01_archive.html#8554 7387

see also
http://www.enorgis.com/arc20021013.htm#BlogID1043
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103443/2002/10/10.html

But it's still quite amazing - that's why it stuck in my mind I s'pose

Teaching a new dog old tricks

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks just like a person playing games with a dog! My girlfriend's terrier plays like that, tracking a waved object, waiting until it slows down enough to be grabbable and then darting in. Wonder if the reserachers had to play with their robot to train it?

Really impressive, but...

[allanj]

I'd like to know how many times it fails before it manages to grasp the objects. If it fails, like, 50 times for each success, then I'm a lot less impressed. I saw the videos (server not slashdotted form where I sit), and the speed and precision with which the hand moves around is really impressive - sure hope this is for real.
I've been doing some robot control software myself (trying to make it drive towards a moving target, using vision guidance) and that much simpler task was hard enough.

Re:Really impressive, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

HELLO!!!???? How many more HOURS will I have to wait for the next article you IDIOTS????
For fuck's sake people must submit thousands of stories every day why do these idiots not let them through!?

Re:Really impressive, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! If audacity, petulance, and insolance were adjustments a stereo, yours would be pegged at full volume with the knobs busted off.

I hope you were just trying to be funny because I'm having real trouble linking that output from a healthy and serious human being.

Foreign devils!

[Cornelius Chesterfie]

You gaijins are raping the server.

Yet another Slashdot link to bookmark and then revisit after the article is off the front page...

Re:Foreign devils!

[Anonymous Coward]

I told you the US was harboring WMD!!

It's a joke, laugh.

Re:Foreign devils!

[Anonymous Coward]

You really oughtn't pluralise gaijin.

Re:Foreign devils!

[Graspee_Leemoor]

FYI the plural of gaijin is gaijin. HAND.

graspee

Applications?

[the uNF cola]

Well, I can think of two :)

sluggy glove ref 0
sluggy glove ref 1

Real improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like a real improvement. It's hard to tell exactly from the movies, but I have the impression that they have improved the 'grasping process' considerably. I mean, putting the right amount of pressure, at the right angle at the right moment is very difficult at best and is closely related to vision. They developed their own vision system and validate it in a 'robotic environment'. A good piece of research that needs to be continued for sure!

Rumor...

[SushiFugu]

Rumor has it that the secret behind the robot's technology is actually the Nintendo Power Glove...

Re:Rumor...

[haedesch]

It is sooo bad!

Be afraid

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what the hand will look like that slashes your throat in 2035 because it's more efficient to arm the extermination robots with knives rather than bullets that have to be replaced.

At the Safety Checkpoints, at the mall, at schools they could be seen, light glinting from faceted metal skulls as they scanned all who passed.

It was during a live 5am broadcast one morning of Bush's 8th consecutive term when he'd slurred out an announcement about his "little buddies" helping out in the war against terrorism. A week later, a million robots were killing all life forms that had appendages that could be loosely identified as "arms" due to a coding error that failed to properly identify the context of what coud be construed as a weapon. The last words most people heard for many months was "For the last time, I order you to drop your weapons!"

But even more gruesome scenes were to come when the robots began filtering back to weapons collection centers where they deposited the "weapons" they'd siezed and arranged them by species and appendage. Some of the more creative ones had broken into zoos and aquariums. And while
most of the government officials were partying in another globalist meeting in Zurich, there was noone home to put a halt to the prescripted robot-press event that would automatically photograph the results of the terrorist sweeps.

One of the last images the human race would ever broadcast into space was of a smiling robot holding up a pair of severed, bloody, duck-feet and proclaiming "We must be forever vigilant in our fight against terrorists!"

Re:Be afraid

[Nate_s_a]

Somehow I doubt they'd want their robots getting that close to a human. We may not be as fast, but there are many ways to hold an assailant armed only with a knife at bay. Why risk having a human destroy/damage the robot in close combat? I think that bullets will still be the mode du jour, unless they come up with some super-efficient energy thingy.

What's more frightening is the prospect of a vision system that becomes super-efficient at directing shots at a human target...one shot, one kill. Not a bad ratio, and I'm sure they wouldn't run out of bullets. They could still have knives as backup just in case;-)

Re:Be afraid

[Anonymous Coward]

"You have 20 seconds to comply."

Re:Be afraid

[TheLink]

I personally think it's easier to make a robot that can accurately shoot stuff at reasonable distances away (500m), than it is to get one to do close combat with a knife.

Another thing, a robot can carry a lot more bullets than knives. e.g. even if a human gets stabbed but manages to jam the arm, the robot is rendered a lot less effective.

In contrast it is comparatively trivial to program the robot to shoot something till it drops, then shoot it for 5-10 more seconds to make sure.

Re:Be afraid

[Mr Guy]

Or to program the robot to use air propelled rounds for close shots, then use metal detectors or X-ray's to retrieve the rounds from the kill. Save the explosive rounds for the far shots. Super-BB guns with autopsy retrieval for the close ups.

Re:Be afraid

[Anonymous Coward]

While I don't disagree with your premise, I have to believe that robots designed to neutralize humans wouldn't have much trouble dislodging any weapon that it had put into a human. It's not like they're going to be restricted with puny human strength.

And I was about to buy that CCD camera

[nounderscores]

Very interesting. What would happen if somebody came up with a whole camera and image processor on a chip which works something like the human retina (ie, pictures come in as photons, descriptions of objects and their spatial relationships come out as electrical impulses)? Or is that what the slashdotted article was about?

Also, Alan Turing once said that one way to make an artifical intelligence is to make an artificial baby and then "educate" it to the level of an intelligent adult.

I'm glad that robots too will now have a chance to play catch in the back yard with their parents.

Lets just show them a bit more respect than B1-66ER got when they grow up.

Aw, Mom!

[Asprin]

BILLY!

Stop teasing the robot! You wouldn't like it if researchers kept taking your oblong right parallelipiped!

mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

i just put the movies over here as the site seems rather slow: PLEASE BE GENTLE PEOPLE!!!

rise of the machines

[andy666]

don't they go to the movies ? they are making a BIG mistake...

pearl harbor jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

there must be someone out there with a good one. i just can't think of one though...

Re:pearl harbor jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, Pearl Harbor bombs You

1. Pearl Harbor
2. ????
3. Profit!

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Pearl Harbors!

First Pearl Harbor post!

Pearl Harbor sunday!

Thanks for the links...

[telstar]

I thought I'd already seen all of the trailers for T3!

insider info

[selderrr]

i know from reliable source that this is not an inhouse development. It's just an arm they found in a steel-melting factory, along with a chip they haven't identified yet. And some frozen blubber.

Re:insider info

[Anonymous Coward]

idiot moderators.

it's funny not "offtopic".

Re:insider info

[Neuticle]

Agreed. A joke about the terminator arm != offtopic

Hopefully it will bite said idiot in the ass when meta-moderation comes back unfair.

Grasping fast randomly moving objects

[Muhammar]

Future likely application on a turtle ranch:

Turtle owner: "Where are all turtles?"
Cybogr the turtle sheppard: "Wait. I was counting them. One turtle, two turtles, three turtles... trrrr and suddenly they were all gone away, pro'ly off to someplace"

Re:Grasping fast randomly moving objects

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell are you talking about???

Time to get a grip?

[UberChuckMeister]

Just wondering about the timing between when the hand is following the object and when it actually grips it.. I think someone mentioned earlier that the object is actually slowed when it is grasped... didn't notice that so much, but there was a question of is there some arbitrary time between when it first starts tracking and when it goes for the grab? Possibly just so that you can see the tracking system at work for like 5 seconds... not sure And what happens if it misses? does it try again? Or does it track with a closed hand? Cool and interesting none the less

George W Bush riding a Segway!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the Segway needs more gyros to be G.W.B. compatible?

Maybe he should stick to horses?

Nice Niven reference...

[Enzo90910]

"On the gripping hand" :-)

Re:Nice Niven reference...

[Guano_Jim]

For the uninitated, "On the Gripping Hand" refers to an expression used by the three-armed "Moties" in the Niven/Pournelle series that begins with The Mote in God's Eye.

When evaluating a decision, the Moties say, "on one hand, on the other hand, and on the gripping hand," giving them three options where a 2-handed human has two.

Obligatory Amazon Link

Good book, but buy it from a used bookstore if you can.

Re:Nice Niven reference...

[Anonymous Coward]

The "gripping hand" option is usually the dominant one that overrides the other considerations. This corresponds to the fact that the Moties' third arm is much stronger than the other two.

Re:Nice Niven reference...

[Pall Agamemnides]

In case anyone's interested, Jerry Pournelle has a blog:

The View from Chaos Manor

damn straight

[Anonymous Coward]

right on brother

Re:damn straight

[rkz]

You are confusing yourself with somone who could ever attract a woman!

Re:damn straight

[Anonymous Coward]

From the linked image: "Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it."

So what what would be the most tactful way to remind her of this obligation?

or not...

[Cyno01]

Eek the Cat.

Another system.

[Kickasso]

I remember seeing it somewhere but can't seem to find any trace. In short, there was a robotic hand much like these guys use, but connected to a stereoscopic vision sensor. It was able to catch golf balls and paper airplanes thrown at it. Does somebody have a link?

Mirror up an ready to go.

[traid]

http://pr0n.biz/stuff/robotics/robotics.tar (8mb)

I tar'd all the mpegs into one file for easier downloading. Enjoy

Oh No!

[Cylix]

With the advant of such new technologies, I fear many people will find their jobs automated.

Rat catchers, while not such a profession of pride, will now have a hard time finding work once this goes mainstream.

This device is a boon to the rat catcher industry and I would like to personally convey my feelings of grief for those who will now feel the boone new technology brings to their job market.

Joe Bob, a rat catcher since 12, had this to say: "Damn, Pa' always tol me and my brother we was chasin a pipe dream. I knewd I shoulda listened and hopped onto the IT market." (IT standing for Interstate Trucker)

Joe Bob, already forseeing the doomed market, has decided to persue his dreams and earning his MSCE certifications.

Truely a sad day.

Has anyone considered...

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone considered that this system might not be so revolutionarily fast...

The videos might be sped up to make it look all wicked fast.

Anyway, not trying to be all conspiratorial or anything... the thought just occured to me.

*bzzz*

[Animaether]

Does this mean it could catch that da*n fly?

Would certainly save in window cleaning :/

Re:*bzzz*

[eatdave13]

Dann? Dagn? Daan? WHAT'S BEHIND THE SPLAT AAAAARGH IT'S KILLING ME!!! Damn, damn, damn, the splat. Damn it straight to hell.

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha

Mirror:

[Anonymous Coward]

Mirror for both sites: http://www.nwps.ws/mirror/

Stephen Hawking must never learn of this!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.theonion.com/onion3123/hawkingexo.html

From the videos

[Anonymous Coward]

From the videos it looks like this is a fantastic advance in robotics. There are these arm and camera that track a white foam brick with great precision as the operator swings it around, then it grasps it when it is close enough... There are also videos of the operator shaking hands with the robot, or the arm holding a foam ball that then tries to avoid another ball that the operator swings at it.

It seems that the system has a reaction time of roughly one tenth of a second - just like the average human- but the website mentions 1 ms feedback delay... The movements are smooth and look natural...

...but I cannot help with the "Terminator" feeling.

Re:From the videos

[lechuck80]

The robot arm really is that fast, and smooth. I work for the company that sold the arm to the university. (Shameless plug-- www.barrett.com).

The arm's we make are really quite amazing. Extremely fast, accurate, and articulate. They have a 4-degree of freedom (dof) arm. We also make a 7-dof arm that is absolutely mesmerizing to watch. (Steel aircraft cables are used to drive it).

Look again

[Anonymous Coward]

If you go to the third page of the research results, there is a 26 MB video, and at the end of this video they show the complete system. The controlling computer is composed of 20 small interconnected IC boards. The whole thing would fit in an Amiga tower if it wasn't for the crazy number of cables.

Re:I covered this 28 years ago... neener neener!

[Anonymous Coward]

Neener neener!!!!!

Neener!!!

Creepy hand

[spineboy]

I don't know about you guys, but this thing
CREEPED ME OUT! I got the willies just looking at it. The way it moves is so un-human, un-animal..

umm yah it's cool, but brrrrrrrr - gives me the shivers. Anyone else agree?

Re:Creepy hand

[jacobjyu]

Yeah, I got a little creeped out as well.. I think the reason it's kinda creepy is that its metal trying to move like a human. It's really in the middle ground between inorganic movements and organic movements, and to us, this is wholly unnatural.. I guess we're just not used to it. Who knows? This thing may be giving you a massage in the future..

Re:Creepy hand

[lechuck80]

Haha, I work at Barrett Technology, the company that sold (and created) the robot arm that is used in these videos. The entire office has the same reactions when we watch one of our arms run. The reason it was chosen by the university was because it is really fast. Their arm is entirely cable driven. There are 4 degree's of freedom, with each motor residing in the base of the robot. Cable and pulley systems are used to create joint movements. It's a real elegant design, and the finished product is mesmerizing to watch. The cables enable very fast movement/ reaction time that is almost un-robotic.

We usually spend a whole day watch the WAM go through it's checkout procedure in quiet awe.

Chicken Catchers allready mechanized

[Neuticle]

Remember this one? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/05/125920 6
If you could integrate the two...
Imagine a school full of ADHD kids: Spitballs and paper-airplanes intercepted in mid air, offending kids automatically sucked up into a "cage" for "time out". (Remembering what an ass I was in Junior High)

Yeah, but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... can it catch a fly with chopsticks?

This troll goes to eleven.

[Glytch]

This troll goes to eleven!

I want a mosquito-targetting robot

[osgeek]

I want to set up a couple of robotically-aimed low-powered LASERs in my backyard that are programmed to target small flying insects.

Finally I won't have to catch flies myself ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not mentioning mosquitos that somehow get through
into the house ...

A better demo...

[Anonymous Coward]

Would have been 1-handed chainsaw juggling. Shouldn't be too long now!

Hmm

[Ledneh]

You know, if they made these things small enough, then someone finally built a better mousetrap. Kudos. ;)

Arm music video?

[Altima(BoB)]

I watched the first arm mpeg video while listening to a rather funky remix of the original Metal Gear theme (From Overclocked Remix if you're curious) and as the guy waved the object in front of the arm and it responded, it looked very funky as it moved to the beat. I think we have our next avant garde music video.

The editors are idiots

[Earlybird]

I bet Slashdot would run a whole lot better if they replaced the editors with this gripping hand.

Witness the date, folks:

• 2002-10-14 14:53:43 The Attack of the Robotic Hand (science,science) (rejected)

I tried twice. I bet it's my ungeeky signature. Yes, that must be it.

pr0n.biz looks great on the company´s proxy log

[dark-br]

Try convincing your boss that robotics.tar (8mb) downloaded from pr0n.biz is just some tec stuff and not some Jena avi, that i would like to see :)

The arms suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, for the arm to grasp something, they have to move the object in a pattern. Notice how they will move back and forth a few times and then slowly repeat the last step in the pattern... only at that point is the arm able to predict where the object will be and grasp it. They should actually call it "semi-random". They still have a LONG LONG way to go before they can grasp objects that are actually moving randomly.

Script-fu

[jman360]

If a scriptkiddie got his grubby hands on a pair of these, he could kick every master ninja's ass with his "r0uc][1Ng-t1G3r.bas"!
Jackie Chan, Master Splinter, Look Out!

Re:pr0n.biz looks great on the company´s proxy lo

[traid]

I work for an 8 billion dollar company and it's the number one site I hit every month :).... mostly because I am checking up on it/the webserver to make sure everything is running smoothly. Next time I will link on a more work safe domain like speedoftechnology.com :)

This reminds me of...

[Anonymous Coward]

The salad days:
"I say, Lionel, catch!"

"On the Gripping Hand:" oh, puh-lease...

[Slartibartfast]

This should _so_ have been titled, "Where's Waldo?"

[Bonus points to thems who get both allusions.]

Other robots

[s0rbix]

They have some other cool robots on that site that can catch falling balls.

Yes, but...

[IceFoot]

Tracking and catching. With speed.
My cat is good at this. 6^)

The possibilites...

[Falconpro10k]

Think of this, we create a fast enough robot, we could use it for self- defense, who wants to get into a weapon fight with something that can remove the weapon from your hand in 500ms...

Re:The possibilites...

[Anonymous Coward]

500 ms is half a second... I could remove a weapon from your hand in half a second but I'm afraid you'd easily shoot me in 0.2 seconds.

New Chicken Catching Machine

[Danta]

The first application of this, that came to my mind was as a new chicken-catching machine.

In other news....

[iamhassi]

Terminator 3 is being released this Summer...

robot

[Anonymous Coward]

Crush...kill...destroy....