TaylorVeltrop
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Developer pairs robot with gaming controllers for remote cat grooming, affection expression
You could take the time to make your cat feel loved. Or you could augment a robot to do it for you. Software engineer Taylor Veltrop has accomplished this by combining a 21-inch-tall Nao robot, a few Wiimotes, a Kinect sensor bar, a treadmill and a head-mounted display. The configuration, which represents about a year's work and several thousand dollars in parts, uses the Kinect and Wii remotes to control the robot's arms, the sensor bar and treadmill to provide movement and the head-mounted display to move the Nao's head and adjust its camera angle. This is still a work in progress, and doesn't include things like two-way audio, which Veltrop plans to implement using an integrated microphone and speakers. Click past the break for a video of robotic feline grooming action.
DIY telepresence robot uses PrimeSense Kinect drivers for extremely awkward push-ups (video)
From enhancing your WoW game to putting you in Tom Hanks's shoes, DIYers the world o'er really do seem to love Kinect. And what do we have here? Taylor Veltrop's Veltrobot remote telepresence 'bot uses the PrimeSense open source Kinect drivers for tracking the user's skeleton, with a modified Kondo KHR-1HV mirroring the operator's movements (which are received via 802.11n WiFi). Right now he is only controlling the arms, but with any luck we should be seeing complete control over all the robot's movements soon enough. Once the thing is finalized, Veltrop plans on releasing an open source development kit. And then? That's right: robot avatars for everyone!
