Amazing Robot Dexterity

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfdHY26E2jc]

Ishikawa Komuro Laboratories are doing some amazing stuff with robots right now. The video above starts out looking like a clumsy and somewhat failed attempt at dribbling a ping pong ball. Once it goes into slow motion however, we see the true action. This robot is dribbling that ball amazingly. Utilizing 1000 FPS cameras, it readjusts and hits the ball on every bounce. As the ball drifts out of the reach of the bot, suddenly we are struck with the lifelike motion.  Personification can be a fleeting thing, appearing so strongly as the little bot tries in vain to reach for that ball, then disappearing again an instant later. If you really want to see some personification worthy of the crab fu challenge, check out their tool manipulation by a multi fingered hand video.

[via BotJunkie]

37 thoughts on “Amazing Robot Dexterity

  1. Wow

    Wow

    Wow

    I wonder what kind of actuators they’re using. That kind of speed seems a bit beyond the usual actuators used in robotics. Maybe they’re using pneumatic ones?

  2. Once the robots combine this with the ability to run and jump, humans will be crushed in the world of basketball. Then, everyone will be crackin’ wise about our mommas…

  3. OMG, its the begining of the end of the world.

    where did they get the CPU to process all that so fast? track ball position -> move robot, in such short time…
    hooo, i think i just saw a cluster

  4. Nobody would watch bball with robots after a week of novelty.
    Also the speed is probably only possible with very light objects, foam balls, the heavier it gets the slower it gets since otherwise the strength needed would grow exponential, and then the drives/actuators would not be able to move so fast, fast yes but not adaptive and at the video’s speed I bet, albeit still faster than humans I think.
    The movies take a lot of liberties with physics.

  5. This is one step closer to much-needed prostheses for amputees. Kinda like I, Robot. It never ceases to amaze me how there’s always someone just around the bend with something better/faster than what someone just designed.

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