Remotely Pat Your Pet With Kinect and a Wiimote

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday January 3, 2012 @09:08AM from the petting-at-a-distance dept.

MrSeb writes "Taylor Valtrop, an enterprising roboticist with a penchant for kitties, has crafted the mother of all Kinect (and Wiimote!) hacks: The teleoperation of a robot to groom a cat. Using a Nao, a $15,000 robot; a treadmill (for moving the robot forward); a head-mounted display (to see what the robot sees); Kinect (for tracking his movements); and two Wiimotes (to move the robot's hands), Valtrop is able to pat a cat with surprising accuracy and gentleness (except for where he accidentally hits the cat in the face)."

1 of 53 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:Uh, yeah... by Belial6 · 2012-01-03 12:34 · Score: 3, Interesting

I have had conversations with my child (now 7) about his severe dislike of the people in character costumes. He only recently stopped avoiding them. He was very clear that he was never afraid of giant rats/bears/rabbits/etc... He was very clear that he always knew that they were people in costumes. He was just freaked out by PEOPLE in giant animal costumes.