Some nerds taught a robot how to catch things! (I’m assuming they had outside help on this one.) No, really, not only can this robotic arm react and catch oddly shaped objects very quickly, but it can watch and learn from humans how to catch things—or how to fail to catch things and get berated by its more athletic peers, I guess, depending on who it’s watching.
The arm was built at the EPFL (English: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne) in Switzerland, but there was no specific purpose in mind for its inception. It could be used to catch falling people or objects that might fall and do damage, but it’s mostly a general look at how far robotics has come in being able to rapidly adapt to a situation and make calculations.
It also makes me wonder who has a sad “My dad was always disappointed that I never wanted to play catch with him,” story in EPFL’s robotics department. Can we program the robot to say, “Do you love me now?”
(via Laughing Squid, image epflnews via YouTube)
- A mathematical model predicts that robots won’t become self-aware
- Which is good, because the UN is debating whether we should have killer robots
- A survey says that British people are DTF with robots
