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Japanese researchers demonstrate a robotic wheelchair operated with Wii game controller
The Personal Mobility Robot, or PMR, is a nimble robotic wheelchair that self-balances on two wheels like a Segway. The machine, based on a platform developed by Toyota, has a manual controller that the rider uses to change speed and direction.
Now two University of Tokyo researchers have decided to upgrade the machine, making it controllable by a Wii remote controller. Why drive the thing with a Wii-mote? Well, why not?
Last year, when I visited the JSK Robotics Laboratory, part of the university’s department of mechano-informatics and directed by Professor Masayuki Inaba, researchers Naotaka Hatao and Ryo Hanai showed me the PMR under Wii control. They didn’t let me ride it while they’re piloting the machine, but it was fun to watch.
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Who wouldn’t want a robot that could make your bed or do the laundry? Well, a team of Berkeley researchers has brought us one important step closer by, for the first time, enabling an autonomous robot to reliably fold piles of previously unseen towels.
Robots that can do things like assembling cars have been around for decades. The towel-folding robot, though, is doing something very new, according to the leaders of the Berkeley team, doctoral student Jeremy Maitin-Shepard and Assistant Professor Pieter Abbeel of Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.
Robots like the car-assembly ones are designed to work in highly structured settings, which allows them to perform a wide variety of tasks with mind-boggling precision and repeatability — but only in carefully controlled environments, Maitin-Shepard and Abbeel explain. Outside of such settings, their capabilities are much more limited.
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Earthquake rescues could be made safer and faster with a new robot being developed at UC Berkeley by engineering grad students Paul Birkmeyer and Kevin Peterson with Professor Ron Fearing.
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Date: On-Demand
Company: Sophos
The web has become the key vector for online attacks - yet the vast majority of businesses are unprotected against today’s modern web-based malware.
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