willow garage

2 Articles

RBD (robotic Beer Delivery)

July 13, 2010 by 25 Comments

Those crazy programmers over at the Willow Garage are at it again. This time around they’ve created a robotic wench to deliver the beer. When thirst strikes you can fire up a web interface and drag a picture of your beer into a shopping basket. Once you submit your order the bot will raid the fridge and return with your frothy treat. It will even open the bottle for you but, as you can see after the break, this is where your beer becomes truly frothy.

So we’ve seen the PR2 playing pool, and now as a barmaid. Willow Garage just joined SparkFun on our list of places we wish we worked. Continue reading “RBD (robotic Beer Delivery)” →

The PR2 Calls The Shots

June 17, 2010 by 15 Comments

Can you beat this robot at pool? This sparks something of a “let the wookie win” attitude for us, but we still love to watch the video. This is the PR2 playing pool thanks to the folks over at the Willow Garage. It uses a laser sensor to detect the legs of the pool table, and cameras to find the diamonds and balls at the playing surface rather than using an overhead camera. They cut down on the coding work needed by using FastFiz, an open source Billiards physics library. The final step was building an interface so the robot could use a cue. Check it out after the break (no pun intended).

Continue reading “The PR2 Calls The Shots” →