We can't stress our "don't try this at home" attitude strongly enough towards readers over this piece of robot hackery from the 5Voltcore collective, called the knife.hand.chop.bot. The basic premise is this: the robot plays a game of "Mumblety-Peg," a test of courage wherein a blade is brought down between your fingers at an ever increasing pace. Of course, we've all played a round or two of this game with friends, but it's unlikely that many of us have allowed a bot to play, much less do all the shot-calling. The system manages to avoid slicing fingers due to signals it receives from an onboard sensor which guides the knife, however, it also utilizes contact sensors underneath the user's hand, which can detect moisture (aka "nervous sweat"). The sweat triggers "stressful" sounds via closure of the contacts, and can have an adverse effect on the accuracy of the aiming mechanism, thus increasing your stress, thus causing you to sweat, thus throwing off the aim, thus... well, we're just going to keep our mitts off of the thing. Check the video after the break to see what all the sweating is about.
[Via
Make]
posted Aug 14th 2007 5:24PM
And next week, Russian Roulette for all the family!
I'm not very impressed. The workmanship on the machine doesn't look very good, the mechanics are simple (boring simple, not elegant simple), and it's slow and noisy.
I'll keep playing this game with my sewing machine tyvm.
That android from the Alien movies is better at this...
Zzzzzzzz...agreed.
Wake me up when someone builds something as cool as Bishop.
Zzzzzzzzz
Perhaps the honorable Lance Henriksen would have some insights on the subject?
Seriously. Bishop FTW.
The machines a bit slow...but if i were to make a machine like that i wouldnt make it that fast. It would scare the crap out of me. Imagine making one of those and turning it on, just to find the off switch was out of reach. Being stuck there for days as it got faster and faster, not moving your hand in fear that your fingers might get sliced and diced. I'm glad I'm not crazy/smart enough to construct something like that :P
How would you turn it on if the switch was out of reach?
-Taylor
You could always just take your hand and pull it directly back.
Oh, F**k that.
That ain't funny man
Was someone breathing into the microphone the whole time on purpose, or was I hearing something else?
I think this game is actually called '5 Finger Fillet'
Mumblety-Peg involves throwing a knife towards your feet.
Yeah, its slow. THATS WHAT IT WANTS YOU TO THINK!
I don't think I'd trust my own coding well enough, let alone someone else's!
I want to see what happens if they run the software on Vista!!! They it would get very interesting!
I, for one, welcome our finger filleting robot overlords.
Anyone know what programming software were they using? Looked interesting.
I'm 99.9% sure it's VVVV: http://vvvv.org/
I use it to make sound-reactive vector animations.
man bishop, i thought you never missed
The control mechanics seem a bit inaccurate (overshoots and such?). I would've thought they'd be using incredibly precise steppers, belt drives and such.
There's no reason an automation manufacturer couldn't make an industrial robot that would do this at an astounding and totally panic-inducing speed and force, missing you by millimetres every time.
It seems to use a laser of some sort to sense hand position. You could make it even more foolproof by adding redundant sensors (laser, optical, thermal), and allowing the robot to reposition the knife as the vertical stroke progresses, if the hand moves at all. You could also have the robot adjust the height so that the blade point barely clears the fingers on the upstroke.
(I still wouldn't be putting my hand in it :P)
This has to be the ultimate party game. WarioWare doesn't even come close, especially if the participants of this knifey game are inebriated. Sign me up for purchase, LoL.
Slowness makes it boring, the fact its boring makes it pointless.
just to get rid of the "oh - so slow, so boring" thing: it is slow in the first turn, it's still not really fast in the 2nd turn, but nobody ever stayed until the 5th turn.
You call THAT Mumblety-Peg? I'll show you Mumblety-Peg!