Today in TechRobot lets you use your Kinect to clean grandma’s house without leaving your own
What can't you do with the Kinect? We already know you can use it to play video games on the side of a building, use your hand as a smartphone, and even use it to perform surgery. And using the motion-detecting gaming accessory to control a robot isn't new, either: Japanese scientists have already created a robotic seeing-eye dog. But now industrial robot maker Yaskawa Electric has upped the ante with a humanoid robot that can be controlled remotely using the Kinect.
The SmartPal VII is what's called a telepresence bot — a robot that essentially allows you to be somewhere you're not, at least in robotic form. So if, for example, your grandmother needs help with household chores, you could use the SmartPal to do them for her, even if you're in a different city.
It has head-mounted stereoscopic cameras to allow for more precise visual input and ease of navigation, and the arms are light weight and equipped with touch sensors to make it safer for human interaction. The robot is able to recognize and move about its environment independently, so the human controller doesn't have to use exactly the same motions as what he wants the robot to perform. The SmartPal extrapolates to, for example, lean farther over in order to pick up an object from the floor.
The SmartPal VII was demonstrated at the 2011 International Robot Exhibition, but there's no word yet on when it might be available to the public or how much it will cost.
[via Engadget]
This article was written by Katherine Gray and originally appeared on Tecca
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