Kinect used to create sword-fighting robot

Written by David Hing

July 20, 2011 | 11:48

Tags: #jedi #kinect #robot #robots #sword #university #xbox-360

Companies: #stanford-university

Robot-building students at Stanford University have created a sword-fighting robot arm with the help of a Kinect sensor. The robot reacts to the actions of an opponent in both offensive and defensive ways.

Stanford University's professor of computer science, Oussama Khatib, explained to MSNBC that 'we were recently at a conference in Shanghai and a company was showing two robots fencing and this is easy because every robot knows exactly what the other robot is doing. The challenge here is how can you get a robot to understand what the human is doing?'

Kinect provided a solution to this problem. The students used the Kinect to enable the robot to pick out objects such as its opponent's sword in a 3D environment, which means it can react by moving into the best defensive position. You can see it in action in the video below.

In addition to the sword-fighting robot, which the team have affectionately named the JediBot, the students have also developed a robot arm that can cook burgers on a grill.

The JediBot joins a long list of creative uses for the Kinect sensor. Do you have a particular favourite that you would like to share in the forums?


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