DARPA fashions miracle robotic attachment from balloon, coffee Topflight robotics boffins in the States have developed a nifty new accessory that no droid should be without - a squashy "gripper" manipulator which can be fashioned out of ground coffee and a party balloon. Credit: John Amend The manipulator works by pressing the soft balloon full of loose coffee grounds down on the …
...with a street sweeper attached...?
I'm actually quite impressed with the picking up a glass and pouring.
OTOH, the writing demo was a disappointment -- I was expecting "Hello, world". (Honestly -- youngsters today...! No sense of tradition!!
...And while it handled the pyramid and the jack, I wonder how well it'd deal with picking up a thumbtack standing on its head...
I've had a set of vacuum splints on my ambulance for at least 15 years. They use polystyrene (or similar) beads but the rest of the operation is the same, although we do tend to gently introduce it under the patient first. I'll try something like this method at my next RTC, although probably not using the head as the point of contact for lifting. If I can connect it to a crane jib, thats my whole manual handling and backstrain issue solved!
Icon becuase some of you might think we'd actually do this without thinking about it, although some of my colleagues might not think about it far enough..
How can I get a job at Darpa, or its UK equivalent (will also consider being an evil henchman if the lab is in a volcano lair, with 60's style groupies) having wacky thougts about the stuff that's already out there? I could save them a fortune.
"How can I get a job at Darpa, or its UK equivalent (will also consider being an evil henchman if the lab is in a volcano lair, with 60's style groupies) having wacky thougts about the stuff that's already out there? I could save them a fortune"
Well it used to be called DERA in the UK, but a couple of governments ago they sold off c95% of it to form QuietiQ. The rest is still somewhat odd.
However the bespoke automation business is full of odd mobs who do odd jobs. Until I saw this the best I'd seen was an effector to pick up and place ripe strawberries (used 2 small side chains running off the same motor driven small gear. *Very* neat).
The company which built the Thrust jet engined cars are also game for a laugh (Yellow pages does not have a "Jet engined car builders" category. You have to get creative).
Some will look at practical skills (stuff you built) over academic qualifications. They need people who can get stuff done, not tell you how to do it.
Not sure about who to approach for a lab job in a dormant volcano...
I had some orthotics built for my ski boots a good seven years ago by a man who uses a large bag full of dusty stuff attached to a vacuum, you stand on it, it sucks and moulds around your feet, you step off, voila foot shapes locked into the bag.
He then forms your orthotic bases on the mould shape.
http://www.footfactor.co.uk/
It's been a while since I saw a truly neat hack like this.
In the robot world the reflex answer is "Build a special purpose end effector to pick up XX" whatever awkward shaped thingy you have.
This is *very* neat. Flexible (in terms of what it can pick up), gentle, no blade server rack of processors to drive it.
BTW I think the first time I saw the principle was as a way to mould ejector seats to precisely fit pilots backs. Essentially (as others have said about boots) a bean bag connected to a vacuum cleaner. There the grip was an unwanted side effect.
This is a nice example of what others have called the "Other way round" effect.
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