Disney Research Robot Can Juggle, Play Catch

Zothecula writes "With the aim of providing some physical interaction between entertainment robots and guests at its theme parks, while still maintaining a safe distance between the two, Disney Research has created an animatronic robot that can play catch and juggle balls with a human partner. Caught balls are thrown back 2.5 meters (8 ft) to the thrower, while the developers have given the robot several different animations that play out when it drops a ball. These include a shaking of the head, looking behind, looking down, or a shrug of the shoulders."

Comments

Re:They'll be giving them machine guns next..

[Bill Wong]

imagine two opposing robot armies tossing grenades back and forth...

A step back

[arielCo]

Maybe they are cutting costs, but this is an inferior alternative to their current, proven approach: Disney Lab Unveils Its Latest Line Of Genetically Engineered Child Stars

Re:They'll be giving them machine guns next..

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

Head is kind of a Lyle Lovett rictus. It looks much less T1 in closeup, though, but still uncanny. Say the following in a laconic drawl: "Nice night for a walk."

Kinect? Maybe.

[Dan East]

According the the video, they're using a Kinect for 3D tracking of the ball. That's pretty good resolution to result in high enough mechanical precision to make a catch. Also would reduce the cost of this project by a small fortune.

However, the article differs from the video. The article says "A Kalman filter algorithm is used to analyze video captured on an external camera system consisting of a Kinect-like ASUS Xtion PRO LIVE to track a colored ball in three-dimensional space and predict its destination and timing."

While the video specifically says "An off the shelf Microsoft Kinect with color and depth cameras is used to obtain the 3D position of colored balls."