Slashdot Mirror
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."
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
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)
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103443/
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.
Well, once they get out a waterproof version, I'll program one to catch fish. Yum, yum. Can't wait.
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
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
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.
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.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Rumor has it that the secret behind the robot's technology is actually the Nintendo Power Glove...
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!"
BILLY!
Stop teasing the robot! You wouldn't like it if researchers kept taking your oblong right parallelipiped!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
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.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
I tar'd all the mpegs into one file for easier downloading. Enjoy
None of us are as dumb as all of us.
You are confusing yourself with somone who could ever attract a woman!
There is no god
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.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra