Chiba University's one-armed robot juggles balls, is not a Juggalo (video)
Two balls, one hand? In this case, that's a definite yes, although the end result is much more appropriate for all ages. Furthering our slow creep towards engineering's Uncanny Valley, comes a cybernetic effort out of Japan's Chiba University that's made to mock our most precious clown-past time: juggling. The one-armed, three-fingered robot, shown off at the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, utilizes a high-speed camera to track a ball's flight at 500fps and help coordinate its repetitive movements with eerie precision. The current setup's not without hitches, though, considering the bot's fixed shoulder joint can only carry out successful catches on a 2D plane before, quite literally, dropping the ball. Refinements are apparently on the way to expand the cyborg limb's range of motion which, of course, will only serve to defeat us in the end. Robot apocalypse, we're looking at you.
