On the Gripping Hand 162
eek_the_kat writes "The Sensor Fusion Project at Ishikawa Hashimoto Laboratory has developed a high speed visual feedback system called SPE-256. It allows the robot to track fast randomly moving objects and grasp them (movies here). The applications seem endless!
I have seen many robot mpegs as of late, many courtesy of /., but these have to be some of the coolest I have ever come across. A must see."
I covered this last year (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it real? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, now that I'm done with that, am I the only one that's dubious as to whether this is real or not? Admittedly I've only inspected the videos and not checked out the rest of the site, but it looks to me as though a lot of those moves can be programmed in and "acted" out by the object.
The best example of this is the handshake. Notice how the hand is not even in the right position to SHAKE a hand until near the end when the hand rotates 90 odd degrees (so it looks like a hand that could possibly be shaken) and then the human hand moves in nice and slowly. Any old dolt can shake a fake hand, I'll bet the robot hand doesn't give half as firm of a handshake as my little brother.
It even looks as though the robot shakes the hand one more time than the human expects.
I'm sure that they've made leaps and bounds into robotic hands, but I can't help but suspect that they're playing it up for more than it's worth.
Is it real? (Score:4, Interesting)
I could only see one camera in their schematics and in all the videos.
How does the robot arm locate the object in a 3 dimensional space, using only one eye?
Other than that, it looks very cool...
-k
Teaching a new dog old tricks (Score:1, Interesting)
Really impressive, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like to know how many times it fails before it manages to grasp the objects. If it fails, like, 50 times for each success, then I'm a lot less impressed. I saw the videos (server not slashdotted form where I sit), and the speed and precision with which the hand moves around is really impressive - sure hope this is for real.
I've been doing some robot control software myself (trying to make it drive towards a moving target, using vision guidance) and that much simpler task was hard enough.
Re:How fast (Score:2, Interesting)
I would describe the speed as on the order of 1/3 the speed of a dog being teased with a tennis ball.
And the sequence looked about the same; the robot hand follows the ball back and forth just like a dog a then lunges out to grab it when it sees its opportunity.
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Another thing if you noticed, the motion of the ball on the stick *WAS NOT* random. It was basically back and forth.
You could kick the ball around and the dog would still track it.
Re:Is it real? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd be more impressed if they used two cameras to simulate "depth perception", myself. I have yet to hear of a setup that used stereoscopic vision.
As to your question, try covering one eye (you good eye, too!), picking up a spoon, and then trying to touch it to something in three-space. It's not as hard as some would have you believe, and I suspect it won't be as hard for a computer to pick it up, either.
Creepy hand (Score:3, Interesting)
CREEPED ME OUT! I got the willies just looking at it. The way it moves is so un-human, un-animal..
umm yah it's cool, but brrrrrrrr - gives me the shivers. Anyone else agree?
Re:Is it real? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the more advanced examples it did use stereoscopic vision. Look at the one where it repeatedly catches a ball. The same for the video where it catches a ball which falls vertically. Only in the tracking-examples it did use a single camera if I recall correctly.