Moving your hand makes this hexapod dance like a stringless marionette. Okay, so there’s obviously one string which is actually a wire but you know what we mean. The device on the floor is a Leap Motion sensor which is monitoring [Queron Williams’] hand gestures. This is done using a Processing library which leverages the Leap Motion API.
Right now the hand signals only affect pitch, roll, and yaw of the hexapod’s body. But [Queron] does plan to add support for monitoring both hands to add more control. We look at the demo after the break and think this is getting pretty close to the manipulations shown by [Tom Cruise] in Minority Report. Add Google Glass for a Heads Up Display and you could have auxiliary controls rendered on the periphery.
While you’re looking at [Queron’s] project post click on his ‘hexapod’ tag to catch a glimpse the build process for the robot.
I somehow haven’t heard of this sensor before.
Anybody know how the Leap Motion actually works?
Read\watch this
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1190
Yes. It’s an over-hyped device that uses an IR camera with 3 IR leds to do finger tracking. The tracking happens in the device, it uses closed-source drivers, the API is limited, and the drivers have “call-home” DRM.
Actually there’s two cameras, and the tracking’s all in software
The smoothness of the motion is definitely visually impressive. Cutting down on the input latency should be a higher priority than adding a second controller, though.
input latency can be reduced to almost zero, but this can make movement very twitchy as the output from the leap is not always perfect. In remote operation low latency would be better however adding smoothing puts far less wear on my hardware for testing (especially when I swap over to using kinect).
That is wicked cool! Although I have to admit, controlling HEXApod (3 DOF each leg) with one 5-fingered hand would not have occurred to me. A specialized interface (going back to the Minority Report example) is definitely in order.
This is the most “natural” moving hexapod I have ever seen. Previously I thought the jerky movements to be a hardware problem. Seems it is a software/control problem.
Now a volantary six legged Reduviidae (six legged spider and like) to donate a brain…
It looks like a giant tarantula doing stretching exercises. (c: