Here's a quick rundown of some recent excellent videos featuring robots, balls and/or robots with balls.
Quadrocopters Juggling
A quadrocopter is a square flat dude which has a set of rotor blades providing lift at each corner. This means that it can precisely control its position, whether by remote control, or (and this is where we get interested) using an in-built AI. Some awesome videos of quadrocopters being awesome can be found here and here. But most excitingly, someone has stuck on some badminton racket heads, and taught a couple of quadrocopters to juggle a ball! They're not perfect, and do drop it a couple of times, and what they're doing isn't strictly juggling, since they're just hitting it back and forth, but the implications for automatic badminton training machines are mind-blowing.
Rollin' Justin
In what can only be described as an attempt to replace your dad, scientists at the German Aerospace Centre have developed a robot that can play catch, and prepare coffee. It has the ability to detect an incoming object and move its arm to make a catch, including catching two balls at once with different hands. It also has sufficient fine motor control to handle the putting of the little cartridge thing into the coffee machine and making a coffee. Now, if they could only develop a robot which could make me some tea...
Balancing Robot
And finally, since all good robot roundups come in threes, here's a robot which can balance precisely on top of a ball. Despite a tantalising initial shot of it holding a stack of glasses of water on top of itself, whilst maintaining uprightness, the rest of the video demonstrates the practical uses of such an amazing robot, such as carrying heavy weights, and my favourite 'omnidirectional wheelbarrow'. It's quite a nice idea, since the ball isn't part of the robot, so could be replaced if it gets damaged. I can totally see humans learning to ballroom dance with tall versions of these guys. In suits. Robot suits.
No comments:
Post a Comment