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Robot Catches High Speed Objects
shpoffo writes "Engineers at the University of Tokyo in Japan have created a robot that can catch a ball moving faster than 186 miles per hour (300 kph) - more than 270 feet per second. It uses an array of photodetectors to directly control the three finger actuators - which can rotate 180 degrees in 0.1 seconds. It's only catching softballs at the moment, but operators are optimistic for it to soon catch other objects and grasp moving things. A video with odd sci-fi TV-series (coral cache) accents is available."
Too late! There is already a card trick performing robot!
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Actually, robot revolution is also happening in China and Korea as well, but there's indeed very little in a way of practical accomplishments coming from west.
http://plyojump.com/ has some in-depth info and couple good essays on these topics and why exactly this is happening. The core problem seems to lie in deeply rooted cultural issues
Also check out Marshall Brain's ( the howstuffworks.com guy ) http://roboticnation.blogspot.com/ blog
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But all the Robotic news seems to be coming out of Japan lately, is anything being done in the US that compares?
1 out of every 2 robots in the world are already in Japan. I guess they have a head start. Societies are different. We allow Mexicans to come into this country in lieu of robotic research. Japan has a much tighter immigration policy.
No, this is not a slam against Mexicans. Its been said publicly by Bush that we like illegal aliens for cheap labor (maybe other Presidents as well).
Watching this made me think about the calculations involved in estimating the trajectory and how well the human brain does it.
There's an old saying in computer science that one of my professor's passed on to me in my undergraduate studies: "Things that humans find hard, computers find easy, and things that humans find easy, computers find hard."
It really rings true when you think about things like factoring polynomials, solving differential equations, and catching a ball. I thought it was interesting, and the saying has stuck with me all these years.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Actually, if you'd look through all the videos on the site, it DOES catch an egg, uncooked, unfrozen. They just have it wrapped in saran wrap in case it breaks, so it doesn't ruin the robot arm. I found that video last friday.