Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Engineer uses programmable robot with Wii and Kinect to pet a cat (Digital Trends)

Just so you know it?s not all doom and cold, metal gloom when it comes to stories about our future robotic overlords, here?s a nice story that combines the internet?s love of robots with the internet?s love of, well.. cats.

Oh, and there???s some interesting elements for gaming fans in this one, too.

Software engineer Taylor Veltrop recently posted a video showing the culmination of a year?s work making a programmable Nao robot into his fully controllable, cat-grooming robotic avatar. In the video, Veltrop uses a combination of Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect controllers, a treadmill, and a head-mounted display to make the robot first approach the cat, and then begin brushing his feline subject.

As you can see in the video (posted below), Veltrop???s interaction with the robot is based on several levels of input. He sees through the robot???s eyes using the head-mounted display, and moves the robot around using the treadmill and the motion-sensing abilities of the Kinect.

Possibly the most interesting element of his experiment, however, is the use of Wii and Kinect controllers to manipulate the robot???s arms and hands and sense his movement in space.

Also interesting? The fact that the cat doesn?t flip out and either run away or swat at the robotic creature approaching it with no small amount of noisy, jerky movement.

According to Veltrop, the next step in his experiment is to incorporate audio input and output mechanisms into the robot ? something he says shouldn?t be too difficult, given the microphone and speakers already present in his head-mounted display.

(via Kotaku)

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

More from Digital Trends

Miami law school organizes conference to discuss legal status of robots

MorpHex robot can seamlessly transform from unassuming sphere to walking hexapod

Sandwich-making robots could revolutionize catering industry (but not just yet)

Top 10 gifts for gamers: Hottest hardware, accessories and peripherals

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20120103/tc_digitaltrends/engineerusesprogrammablerobotwithwiiandkinecttopetacat

steve miller band boston weather kara dioguardi thomas kinkade the shining when does daylight savings time end world series mvp

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.