Comments on: Scratchbot: Whiskers to the rescue

By: sunjester

sunjester — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:33:55 +0000

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.

By: chris

chris — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:41:43 +0000

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.

By: areddishgreen

areddishgreen — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:43:29 +0000

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!

By: Iv

Iv — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:59:48 +0000

It is cute, that’s enough for me !

By: Federico

Federico — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:16:59 +0000

@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)

By: Benny M

Benny M — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:49:12 +0000

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?

By: talr

talr — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:38:03 +0000

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…

By: cjac

cjac — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:24:46 +0000

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

By: jesus in techicolour

jesus in techicolour — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:13:43 +0000

so how do I motorise the whiskers on my cat?

By: Christian

Christian — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:31:45 +0000

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.

By: Shane

Shane — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:04:09 +0000

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…

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:56:16 +0000

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.