juggling robot

[Ether]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...ng-skills.html

[legogeek24]

Now that must have been hard to program... That's pretty incredible

[CalTran]

Now that is pretty darned amazing. Man oh man that must have been one heck of a project. Imagine if they made *that* the game next year...juggling balls and bonus points for a tandem-juggle with another robot. End game would be like Aim High and you throw all the balls through a hoop.

[s_forbes]

Cool! I want to see it do Mill's Mess.

[GaryVoshol]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't seem to be that tough of a challenge. One assumes that the robotic hands can deliver the balls at the same speed and trajectory every time - something that the human juggler cannot do as accurately. Once the curves are plotted, the only programming problem is to figure out where the hand needs to be to catch the ball.

It's impressive looking, but I'm not sure it's that technically challenging.

[lemiant]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't seem to be that tough of a challenge. One assumes that the robotic hands can deliver the balls at the same speed and trajectory every time - something that the human juggler cannot do as accurately. Once the curves are plotted, the only programming problem is to figure out where the hand needs to be to catch the ball.

It's impressive looking, but I'm not sure it's that technically challenging.

In a perfect world it isn't... but the world isn't perfect.

[Bill_B]

I'm reminded of the Festo water juggler that uses their pneumo-muscle devices. Link has escaped memory or is on another computer.

Both videos show dropped balls [not a complaint] so I suppose the video released may be the longest segment with the best performance result they tried. Again, not a complaint. We dress and neaten for photos we think will be archival.

It does decidedly demonstrate mechanical agility already. Next challenge, Mr. Phelps, juggle raw eggs or variety of objects like ball, hammer, and cigar box.

[ewhitman]

A humanoid robot juggling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p9ZXueZeJc

Funnels were used to help recover from the unpredictability of where the thrown balls would go.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by lemiant

In a perfect world it isn't... but the world isn't perfect.

I don't see that the machine has any compensation mechanism for this imperfect world. So, if it's running open loop (that's what I'm implying) then it really IS a simple task as Gary noted.

Now if it could do what is shown at 1:37 (or even 4:48) in this video, now THAT would be amazing.

[slijin]

The article -does- state that it uses high-speed cameras to track the balls and move the 'hands'.

[DonRotolo]

Then I judge it "Amazing".

The real test would be to artificially perturb one ot more balls - a strong puff of air perhaps - and see what happens.

Or throw another ball in there...