The guy touches the wiskers, and the bot immediately points it’s ‘head’ at it. Without feeling where it is in the meantime…

So I’d say there’s someting more complex going on.

Posted at 12:56 pm on Jul 2nd, 2009 by Peter

Still pretty neat, it almost looks like a real creature by the way it moves… But I can’t say that it looks like the “whiskers” are the only things sensing from that demonstration…

Posted at 1:04 pm on Jul 2nd, 2009 by Shane

The whiskers would be useful if the robot it likely to run into thin supports that wouldn’t necessarily be picked up on IR or sonar. Something like scaffolding or support cables.

Posted at 1:31 pm on Jul 2nd, 2009 by Christian

so how do I motorise the whiskers on my cat?

Posted at 2:13 pm on Jul 2nd, 2009 by jesus in techicolour

would be helpful if visibility were limited by say, smoke, that would obstruct any ir or ultrasonic solutions.

Posted at 2:24 pm on Jul 2nd, 2009 by cjac

I agree. Unless you set the ultrasonic sensor to calibrate itself to the density of the air, and surround gases, I could possibly be a rather inaccurate way of proximity sensing. But then again, it depends on the intended application of the machine…

Posted at 4:38 pm on Jul 2nd, 2009 by talr

Bristol/Bristle. Am I the only one to notice that?

I like the idea of whiskers on a bot, but won’t wiggling them complicate the process?

Posted at 11:49 pm on Jul 2nd, 2009 by Benny M

@techicolour: whiskers are actually protractyle on cats.
@benny: by wiggling them the robot can probably detect both position and distance of the obstacles more accurately. Whiskers have different lenghts, by counting how many of them are touching the object you can infer the distance probably.

Anyway – the robot looks really fine but… ultrasonic sensors are here since decades and they are now very precise. (And they are not affected by smoke or gases within reasonable percentages)

Posted at 2:16 am on Jul 3rd, 2009 by Federico

It is cute, that’s enough for me !

Posted at 3:59 am on Jul 3rd, 2009 by Iv

The novel thing about these whiskers is that the robot is able to locate the position of the obstruction. Just look at how the head turns to point at the end of the ruler when it detects it, even when it is above and below horizontal. Very cool!

Posted at 5:43 am on Jul 3rd, 2009 by areddishgreen

This thing behaves like a mouse, thats the impresive part. I don’t care where the data comes from. maybe you could swap the whiskers for somthing eltse and get the same thing but that don’t matter.

Posted at 8:41 am on Jul 3rd, 2009 by chris

looks cool and seem to have recognition of objects. its said cats use their whiskers to see how small of a space they can fit into before they get stuck.

Posted at 7:33 am on Jul 4th, 2009 by sunjester