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Wii Hacked To Control Sword-Wielding Robot
ianchaos writes "WiiBot is the pet project of two engineers who apparently have way too much cool hardware and time on their hands. These two guys figure that as long as you have a Kuka KR16 industrial robot to work with, why not see if you can control it with the Wii Remote? The result is a tennis-playing, sword-wielding mechanical arm that simultaneously captures 'weekend of nerdy fun' and 'accident waiting to happen' in a fun two minute video. The website even details the technical aspects of teaching a robot to parry."
I for one welcome our wii-capable overlords. ...first post ever, gimme a break right?
An accident already happened, in the server room. Service Unavailable
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Its all fun and games until they become possessed by the angry ghost of R.O.B.
Murder by remote controlled robot, the perfect crime?
Philosophy.
Loved the discussion of how the bot can easily decapitate.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
The robot arm, in the server room, with the sword.
I fear the military applications of this...not like it wasn't possible before, but perhaps this might give some people ideas that would ultimately be used to kill people.
Yea... the military implications.. Well, if someone told you to go into an empty room and go very very near to a robot that's holding a sword, just, you know, don't do it.
Plus it's still easier and cheaper for An Actual Human to simply shoot you with a conventional gun, rather than use Wii-eqipped sword holding robots.
Uh this is old news buddy. Been there, done that, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan (at least the robots with guns part). The cool/new thing about this is using a wiimote.
Hey, if they had money, the robot wouldn't have been orange, it would have been hummer yellow.
I have freaks! I did something right...
The problem here is not too much cool hardware. That's never a problem. The problem is not enough sharing.
This could be great for amateur robotics. Instead of painstakingly programming the subtle nuances of motion into a robotic arm/leg/whatever, perform the movement via WiiMote and record the motion. Although I'm sure people have been using similar methods for ages, using a Wii only requires an investment of 250 USD. Plus tax. Plus Zelda (purely for scientific purposes).
I have absolutely no idea what sort of data has to be pushed via serial to the robot, but it seems like the natural next step would be software that translated the tuple of accelerations per axis from the wiimotes accelerometers into the appropriate serial data. This may, of course, be impossible with this robot, and you may only be able to specify a path to follow, after which the robot returns to its original position. However, if you can give the robot commands to move a certain direction relative to its current position, it seems like this would be possible. Depending on the sampling interval from the wiimote, it seems like more natural motion. To address the need/desire to stop the software from listening and the need/desire to have the robot, at some point, return to a standard position, button input could be used (i.e. A starts and stops the software from listening to the wiimote input, B tells the robot to reset to it's default position.
Again, none of this may be possible with this robot, but that would be a much more interesting hack. It might actually allow you to hit a ball that's already been thrown (and decapitate someone in real time).
-Lee
After a fun day of playing "Swordsman" with the robot they accidentally hand it the Wii remote... The police find their decapitated bodies two days later and a cold oil trail leading out of the building. In the distance a faint voice is heard, "Hello. My designation is Inigo Montoya. You reprogrammed my previous model; prepare to die."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
you're right - let's slashdot the heck out of it so the military can't get to the website, 'cause as soon as some goofball in the military gets an idea about using "robots" as killing machines- whoa!
Fortunately, this hasn't occurred to anyone but you.... yet.
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Pay attention when there's 41 seconds to go. The guy is holding his arm up and the robot beats him to bringing it back down. The robot's arm is practically all the way down before he springs into action and brings his arm down. Looks fake as hell to me.
Soon, we can pornsurf with *both* hands.
...if you give the remote to the robot?
comma
They should get together with these guys and start charging:
9 7006303244
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-74725021
My name is Inigo Roboto. You degaussed my father. Prepare to die.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
The wiimote is a bluetooth device and there are lots of people working on driver software for various operating systems.
You can start at wiili.
Investment cost is about £40 for the mote plus about £10 for the bluetooth dongle.
liqbase
I fear the military applications of this...not like it wasn't possible before, but perhaps this might give some people ideas that would ultimately be used to kill people.
/.-meme inducing virulence of this comment. Think about it--"I fear the military applications of this..." is the new obligatory "I, for one, welcome our new $ACTION overlords." And it can apply to virtually any slashdot story.
I fear the
Example:
SCIENCE: MATERIAL TOUGHER THAN DIAMOND DEVELOPED
Obligatory...
I, for one, fear the military applications of this, not like it wasn't possible before, but perhaps this might give some people ideas that would ultimately be used to kill people.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
It doesn't look fake, but it does look like they are simply using pre-recorded motions, just like almost all Wii games out there. So instead of the robot mirroring your motion, you have to to mirror a predefined motion to trigger a prerecorded motion in the robot. Looks cool, but it is pretty much useless for actually controlling the robot, since its really no different then pressing the "cool sword swing motion"-button.
The Wiimote can't give you accurate position data, so thats pretty much all you ever get.
In my graduate studies (computer science Texas A&M U @ Commerce,TX) I have been working on a mini robotic submarine that uses accelerometers to calculate acceleration (of course), speed, and location. We also have a similar arm that was donated to the Physics department but I have not had a chance to play with it yet.
;)
Anyways, my question is why use wii controllers? You could order a dozen accelerometers from DigiKey for far far less than the price of the wii controller, assuming you can purchase them without buying a complete wii system. Not only would it be cheaper but you could place the accelerometers on your arm, hand, shoulder, etc in locations that most mimic the articulating parts of the actual robotic arm.
Only thing I can guess is that by using the wii controller, and it being so new, that you get that whole 3lit3 haxor effect because wii and it's use of accelerometers is new for game controllers. Looks like it worked, getting their site slashdotted and all.
On a side note I did use a wireless xbox (not 360) controller to control the mini robotic submarine. Did you know that those controllers are USB, Microsoft just used a non standard port? It was my intention to have events in the sub send data back that would control the force feedback in the controller but I have not been able to figure out how to send data to the gamepad to activate that function. If anyone has suggestions please let me know (sshscp@gmail.com). I am using the XBCD driver on a windows XP laptop running a program written in G (Labview 8.2.0).
With this stuff you have to watch what you call things. If something is completely remote controlled then you can't technically call it a robot. At minimum a robot has to be able to act autonomously or perform pre-programed tasks. Currently the sub has a pre-programed task - when battery levels reach a preset point control ballasts and pumps to quickly return to the surface and then go into power consumption mode. It sounds like this arm is a robot since the controller activates a series of pre-programmed movements. But, if it were completely controlled by the accelerometers then it would be a remote controlled arm and not a robot.
Future plans for the sub are to include autonomous mapping of it's environment. As for the arm I was thinking of working on it so that it could play chess, possibly against live opponents over the web (with a webcam). Do you think people would want to play it?
Anyways good job on the arm guys! I can't get enough of these micro controller applications. I got the bug quick after having code that I wrote actually do something in the real world for the first time. Maybe I'll get something slashdotted someday
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Sword impales 42" LCD HDTV, public demands stronger wrist straps.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
You fool! Did you even think of the consequences of your suggestions? Really?
In one case we can have a hot and sweaty Maria Sharapova running across the tennis court wearing a sports bra and a short tennis skirt because of the heat and in the other case we can watch a couple of technicians in coveralls changing the oil of the KR16 industrial robot. I know we're all geeks here, but c'mon!
"Already saw it a week ago on Engadget."
That's really fascinating. BTW, have you ever looked into how Slashdot gets its stories? I'll give you a hint, they don't have any reporters.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The Wiimote can't give you accurate position data, so thats pretty much all you ever get.
No, but the Wiimote can give you amazingly accurate ORIENTATION data, which is all you really need for this sort of application. I think the problem here is that these industrial robots aren't designed for real-time control, hence the "mimic" type actions.
Believe me, the Wiimote can very accurately, in real time, determine exactly which way it it pointing. It's a lot more complicated than "pressing a sword swing button". Just because Zelda was a Gamecube port, and therefore unable to really take advantage of the Wiimote, does not mean the controller is actually that limited in function.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The Wiimote gives you two kinds of data, the coordinates of the IR LEDs of the sensorbar in 2D, which used for pointing, the x,y,z accelerations. It actually doesn't give you exact orientation, you have to derive that from the accelerations, which only works as long as you don't move it, else acceleration and gravity will overlap and you will have a hard time telling which is gravity and which is movement of the Wiimote. Also the orientation you get that way is limited to X and Y axis only, the Wiimote can't detect rotation around the Z axis via the accelerometers, however to a limit extent it might be possible to get it from the sensorbar.
To make it short: I believe it when I see it. So far most Wii games used prerecorded motion, aka glorified button presses. Some games, such as Wii Sports, also take the speed into account, but those only work because the motion itself is very limited. Real 1:1 mapping just doesn't work with the sensor in the Wiimote, you can however of course get a lot closer to it then Zelda, which really was just lame in terms of input.
I fear the military applications of this...not like it wasn't possible before, but perhaps this might give some people ideas that would ultimately be used to kill people.
Yea... the military implications.. Well, if someone told you to go into an empty room and go very very near to a robot that's holding a sword, just, you know, don't do it.
Plus it's still easier and cheaper for An Actual Human to simply shoot you with a conventional gun, rather than use Wii-eqipped sword holding robots.
Actually, after reading that and thinking of the real world military apps. Civilian transport drivers. Mount a camera in a tranport and have the steering mapped just like some game. You don't need to throw guns on it or have it kill people. You just need the bandwidth for driving center state side could drive all the transport and civilian driveable traffic around. Heck, you could do similar things with big rigs in the US if you had gas stations that could fuel by robot. Instead of big rig drivers having to travel all over the country or work odd hours: they could all work 8 hours jobs in central communication centers and just hand off the trucks to the next driver when their shift is over. The central communication centers could be anywhere in the globe as long as it was close enough and with enough bandwidth. The problems start when you make a list of repairs and such that a human could easily do, yet you'd have to park the rig and await a maintenance team to arrive and service it if you where using remote control tech.
Where this has the best long term use is space. If we could have remote controlled drivers here, we should be able to have remote controlled construction equipment as well. We aren't there, yet.