RaffaelloDandrea
Latest
Robots master delicate art of juggling, prep for clown college (video)
Not to be outdone by their flying cousins, some less mobile bots are taking on the challenge of juggling. After the break you'll find a pair of vids, including one featuring a creation from the Czech Technical Institute in Prague that can launch five balls between its two "hands" with the aide of a high-speed tracking camera. The other clip stars the "Blind Juggler," a somewhat more impressive machine that has no sensors or cameras. Instead, it relies on mechanical feedback and some fancy math to control the trajectory of the ball and keep it airborne. The Blind Juggler debuted back in 2009, but creators Philipp Reist and Raffaello D'Andrea introduced an interesting wrinkle for version 2.0 by turning the entire thing into a pendulum that passes the ball to itself. Clearly, the next step is face paint and red, foam noses -- bringing our most bed-wetting of night terrors to life.
Quadrocopters juggle balls cooperatively, mesmerize with their lethal accuracy (video)
You've seen one quadrocopter juggle a ball autonomously while gliding through the air, but how's about a pair of them working cooperatively? Yeah, we've got your attention now. The Zurich-based lab that brought us the piano-playing and ball-bouncing quadrocopter is back with a simply breathtaking display of robotic dexterity and teamwork. Like all mad scientists, they call their Flying Machine Arena research "an experiment," though we see it a lot more as a Pong-inspired dance of our future overlords. We all know how far video games have come since two paddles batted a ball between one another, right?
