FirstRobotics
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Dean Kamen's robotic prosthetic arm gets detailed on video
While you'd heard the whispers of a robotic prosthetic arm being crafted by Dean Kamen and his engineering colleagues, very little details have since surfaced on the project. Thankfully, a video was captured during a recent conference in Honolulu, Hawaii where Dean was addressing the FIRST Robotics competition. During the speech, however, he segued (ahem) into a brief glimpse at what's been going on behind the scenes with the device. Shown as "Gen X - Separate Exo Control," the robotic arm was seen demonstrated by team members grasping a water bottle from a friend, picking up an ink pen and turning the wrist over in order to write, and even scratching his nose. Kamen explained that haptic response was paramount, and the "fully completed" prototype sports 14 degrees of freedom (and actuators) and weighs less than nine pounds. Click on through for the captured demonstration.[Via BoingBoing]
FIRST Robotics champion crowned, Dean Kamen elated
Tossing up autonomous robots into the galaxy to perform a variety of prototypical tests is intriguing to say the least, but a trio of high-school teams were able to bring robotic competition a bit closer to home as they took home the gold in the highly-anticipated FIRST Robotics corrivalry. Cooked up by Dean Kamen (you know, the Segway inventor) in 1989, the challenge garnered entrants from a whopping 23 countries this year, and teammates from Bobcat Robotics from South Windsor, Connecticut, Highrollers from Las Vegas, Nevada, and Gompei and the HERD from Worcester, Massachusetts were able to craft the most dexterous and successful machine. Their creation reportedly excelled at "completing simple -- albeit goofy -- tasks such as shooting balls or stacking inner tubes," but we can already imagine the evil potential these innocent bots already posses. Apparently, "thousands of screaming high-school participants" were in attendance to witness the unveiling of a new champion, and if the popularity of this contest is any indication, we could be seeing these uber-intelligent, entirely autonomous robot armies being constructed an awful lot sooner than previously expected hoped.
