I can see this cool robot creating the first Wiimote related death… But in all seriousness what a great job interfacing the controller to an industrial arm!
Video after the jump.
“Brian and I were talking in his office a couple weeks ago about the Kuka robots’ fast reactions to serial data, and I realized, hey, why not hook it to a WiiMote? We had both fallen for Nintendo’s plucky little controller like everyone else, and had seen plenty of other WiiMote hacks. It had been a number of weeks of work without any rest, so we decided to set aside the coming Saturday to hook up one of the robots to a WiiMote.
The idea was to take one industrial robot, add a laptop talking to a WiiMote, strap on a tennis racket, have it follow the swings that the user makes, and do it all in a few hours on a Saturday so we could get back to our busy schedules. Of course we had to put on a sword too, and if there was time, maybe an Airsoft gun. Also, we wanted it to fight people, but you can’t have everything.
I dragged myself out of bed at noon-thirty and called Brian to see if he still wanted to try the Wii hack. We met at the office (where we spend most of our Saturdays) and I set to work on the WiiMote-to-robot software. He began the epic process of attaching a tennis racket to the KR16 and programming the physical motions into it.
A KR16 is a small industrial robot by Kuka. There were a couple in the shop waiting to be installed for various industrial projects. The one we were using had a polishing wheel on it.”
[...] Intelligent Hospital Solutions is building a system called RIVA which stands for Robotic IV Automation, it’s a large box of automation which would be installed in a hospital to aid in the proper medication delivery. Have a close look at the second image, that’s right a huge robotic arm is used to move the product through various stages inside the machine. I wonder if the development team has some fun with the robotic arms before they are installed into the system? Videos after the jump. “Robotic IV Automation (RIVA) is a medical device developed by Intelligent Hospital Systems Inc. (IH Systems) which will be used by hospital pharmacies to automatically and accurately prepare IV syringes and bags. By automating the preparation of IV syringes and bags, RIVA will address the issues of safety for the patient and the pharmacy technician, efficiency and effectiveness in the pharmacy and the challenges of a changing regulatory environment.” [...]
[...] You have seen the Staubli Robot under Wiimote control, now have a look at a Mitsubishi PA10 Robot Arm being operated in real time using a Nintendo Wiimote. The inspiration for this project was from this Wiimote Sword hack. [...]
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