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Wii Hacked To Control Sword-Wielding Robot

Posted by Zonk on Sun Feb 04, 2007 02:51 AM
from the no-part-of-that-title-is-not-freaking-sweet dept.
Robotics Wii (Games) Hardware Hacking
ianchaos writes "WiiBot is the pet project of two engineers who apparently have way too much cool hardware and time on their hands. These two guys figure that as long as you have a Kuka KR16 industrial robot to work with, why not see if you can control it with the Wii Remote? The result is a tennis-playing, sword-wielding mechanical arm that simultaneously captures 'weekend of nerdy fun' and 'accident waiting to happen' in a fun two minute video. The website even details the technical aspects of teaching a robot to parry."

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[+] Wiimote Hacking Goes Big-Time 51 comments
The Wall Street Journal is taking Wiimote hacking seriously. A front-page article from this past weekend discusses the many uses to which enterprising hackers have put the Wiimote, the motion sensing piece of the Wii console. Included is a video of a few of the projects in action. "Tim Groeneboom, who lives in the Netherlands, uses his Wii-mote to spice up his deejay act. He was inspired by a video on the Web of a California music student bobbing in front of the computer in his room and making jabbing motions with the Wii-mote to splice different tracks. During his second gig with the Wii-mote, Mr. Groeneboom, 22, says he was able to roam up to about 100 feet from his deejay booth and still be able to control how the music blended and do some sound effects ... Aaron Rasmussen has a sporting purpose for his Wii-mote. At his Garden Grove, Calif. software company, USMechatronics, he and his partner stuck a tennis racket in the 'hand' of a $40,000 industrial robot and then tweaked the Wii-mote to control the robot's arm so it can hit back tennis balls on the factory floor. 'This is what we do to relax,' he says."
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  • Obligatory. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr_Rogerson (1059660) on Sunday February 04 2007, @02:57AM (#17879374)
    I for one welcome our wii-capable overlords. ...first post ever, gimme a break right?

  • Looks like... (Score:5, Funny)

    by tanveer1979 (530624) <web@tanv e e r . in> on Sunday February 04 2007, @03:00AM (#17879384) Homepage Journal
    An accident already happened, in the server room. Service Unavailable

  • Mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fred the computer (607759) on Sunday February 04 2007, @03:02AM (#17879392)
    Youtube video mirror here [youtube.com]

  • Robotic Operating Buddy (Score:5, Funny)

    by ChromeAeonium (1026952) on Sunday February 04 2007, @03:06AM (#17879410)
    Its all fun and games until they become possessed by the angry ghost of R.O.B.

  • The perfect crime? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Umbral Blot (737704) on Sunday February 04 2007, @03:08AM (#17879422) Homepage
    Murder by remote controlled robot, the perfect crime?

  • RUR-tastic... (Score:5, Funny)

    by L0stb0Y (108220) on Sunday February 04 2007, @03:09AM (#17879424) Journal
    Loved the discussion of how the bot can easily decapitate.

  • Time to Update the Clue Boardgame (Score:5, Funny)

    by hedgemage (934558) on Sunday February 04 2007, @03:09AM (#17879428)
    The robot arm, in the server room, with the sword.

  • Neat Implications (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slib (876774) on Sunday February 04 2007, @03:25AM (#17879484)
    This could be great for amateur robotics. Instead of painstakingly programming the subtle nuances of motion into a robotic arm/leg/whatever, perform the movement via WiiMote and record the motion. Although I'm sure people have been using similar methods for ages, using a Wii only requires an investment of 250 USD. Plus tax. Plus Zelda (purely for scientific purposes).

    • Re:Neat Implications (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2007, @03:45AM (#17879526)
      I may be wrong here, but if I'm reading them correctly, they STILL had to manually program the movement sequences (using the robot's built-in 6D controller). Then they had to hand-code roughly analogous coordinates into the software. Finally, they calculated what the user was doing based on the accelerometers in the Wii-Mote, and did a fuzzy match on the 6 actual, 5 practical pre-coded motions, selecting the closest match and performing it.

      This meant that the robot could do a handful of simple, pre-defined motions, and the Wii-Mote was simply used to select the closest available match. Not saying it isn't cool, but it's a far cry from programming the robot with a Wii-Mote. I'm not entirely sure those robots could even handle the amount of data it would take to real-time mirror a Wii-Mote. These machines are designed to do a handful of carefully pre-recorded motions (typically one), over, and over, and over, and over for years with near perfect accuracy. Not to mention the fact that there's really no direct way to translate the accelerometer data from a Wii-Mote into useful, sensical motions for a 3-jointed mechanical arm (or any robot, for that matter.) So even if the poor thing could somehow handle that much incoming data, figuring out what data to send it in the first place would be damn near impossible.

      What they're doing is cool as hell, but they're not programming the robot with the Wii-Mote. They're controlling it, just like the headlines says. Just sayin'.
      [ Parent ]

  • What happens next... (Score:5, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot (874524) on Sunday February 04 2007, @03:59AM (#17879560)
    After a fun day of playing "Swordsman" with the robot they accidentally hand it the Wii remote... The police find their decapitated bodies two days later and a cold oil trail leading out of the building. In the distance a faint voice is heard, "Hello. My designation is Inigo Montoya. You reprogrammed my previous model; prepare to die."

  • It's my ... ah ... sword, yeah. (Score:5, Funny)

    by surfcow (169572) on Sunday February 04 2007, @04:24AM (#17879632) Homepage
    Soon, we can pornsurf with *both* hands.

  • Entertainment Application (Score:5, Interesting)

    by I'll Provide The War (1045190) on Sunday February 04 2007, @04:49AM (#17879700)
    They should get together with these guys and start charging:

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-747250219 7006303244 [google.com]

  • Princess bride version (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kierthos (225954) on Sunday February 04 2007, @05:40AM (#17879868) Homepage
    My name is Inigo Roboto. You degaussed my father. Prepare to die.

  • What WHat WHAT? accelerometers by the dozen (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mrnick (108356) on Sunday February 04 2007, @06:24AM (#17880010) Homepage
    In my graduate studies (computer science Texas A&M U @ Commerce,TX) I have been working on a mini robotic submarine that uses accelerometers to calculate acceleration (of course), speed, and location. We also have a similar arm that was donated to the Physics department but I have not had a chance to play with it yet.

    Anyways, my question is why use wii controllers? You could order a dozen accelerometers from DigiKey for far far less than the price of the wii controller, assuming you can purchase them without buying a complete wii system. Not only would it be cheaper but you could place the accelerometers on your arm, hand, shoulder, etc in locations that most mimic the articulating parts of the actual robotic arm.

    Only thing I can guess is that by using the wii controller, and it being so new, that you get that whole 3lit3 haxor effect because wii and it's use of accelerometers is new for game controllers. Looks like it worked, getting their site slashdotted and all.

    On a side note I did use a wireless xbox (not 360) controller to control the mini robotic submarine. Did you know that those controllers are USB, Microsoft just used a non standard port? It was my intention to have events in the sub send data back that would control the force feedback in the controller but I have not been able to figure out how to send data to the gamepad to activate that function. If anyone has suggestions please let me know (sshscp@gmail.com). I am using the XBCD driver on a windows XP laptop running a program written in G (Labview 8.2.0).

    With this stuff you have to watch what you call things. If something is completely remote controlled then you can't technically call it a robot. At minimum a robot has to be able to act autonomously or perform pre-programed tasks. Currently the sub has a pre-programed task - when battery levels reach a preset point control ballasts and pumps to quickly return to the surface and then go into power consumption mode. It sounds like this arm is a robot since the controller activates a series of pre-programmed movements. But, if it were completely controlled by the accelerometers then it would be a remote controlled arm and not a robot.

    Future plans for the sub are to include autonomous mapping of it's environment. As for the arm I was thinking of working on it so that it could play chess, possibly against live opponents over the web (with a webcam). Do you think people would want to play it?

    Anyways good job on the arm guys! I can't get enough of these micro controller applications. I got the bug quick after having code that I wrote actually do something in the real world for the first time. Maybe I'll get something slashdotted someday ;)

    Nick Powers

    • Re:Military? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by suv4x4 (956391) on Sunday February 04 2007, @03:13AM (#17879440)
      I fear the military applications of this...not like it wasn't possible before, but perhaps this might give some people ideas that would ultimately be used to kill people.

      Yea... the military implications.. Well, if someone told you to go into an empty room and go very very near to a robot that's holding a sword, just, you know, don't do it.

      Plus it's still easier and cheaper for An Actual Human to simply shoot you with a conventional gun, rather than use Wii-eqipped sword holding robots.
      [ Parent ]

    • Re:Military? (Score:5, Funny)

      by binarybum (468664) on Sunday February 04 2007, @04:02AM (#17879570) Homepage
      you're right - let's slashdot the heck out of it so the military can't get to the website, 'cause as soon as some goofball in the military gets an idea about using "robots" as killing machines- whoa!

        Fortunately, this [navy.mil] hasn't [com.com] occurred [slashdot.org] to [decaturdaily.com] anyone [usatoday.com] but you.... yet.
      [ Parent ]

    • Re:Are they really controlling it with the Wiimote (Score:4, Informative)

      by grumbel (592662) on Sunday February 04 2007, @06:15AM (#17879974)
      It doesn't look fake, but it does look like they are simply using pre-recorded motions, just like almost all Wii games out there. So instead of the robot mirroring your motion, you have to to mirror a predefined motion to trigger a prerecorded motion in the robot. Looks cool, but it is pretty much useless for actually controlling the robot, since its really no different then pressing the "cool sword swing motion"-button.

      The Wiimote can't give you accurate position data, so thats pretty much all you ever get.

      [ Parent ]

        • Re:Are they really controlling it with the Wiimote (Score:4, Informative)

          by grumbel (592662) on Sunday February 04 2007, @12:59PM (#17881636)
          The Wiimote gives you two kinds of data, the coordinates of the IR LEDs of the sensorbar in 2D, which used for pointing, the x,y,z accelerations. It actually doesn't give you exact orientation, you have to derive that from the accelerations, which only works as long as you don't move it, else acceleration and gravity will overlap and you will have a hard time telling which is gravity and which is movement of the Wiimote. Also the orientation you get that way is limited to X and Y axis only, the Wiimote can't detect rotation around the Z axis via the accelerometers, however to a limit extent it might be possible to get it from the sensorbar.

          To make it short: I believe it when I see it. So far most Wii games used prerecorded motion, aka glorified button presses. Some games, such as Wii Sports, also take the speed into account, but those only work because the motion itself is very limited. Real 1:1 mapping just doesn't work with the sensor in the Wiimote, you can however of course get a lot closer to it then Zelda, which really was just lame in terms of input.
          [ Parent ]
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