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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."
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.
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.
-- lk t lv ll th vwls t f wrds. T svs lts f tm t wrt bt ts pn n th ss t rd nd mks m lk lk cmplt dpsht.
I tar'd all the mpegs into one file for easier downloading. Enjoy
None of us are as dumb as all of us.