Communicating Through Motion
Posted on May 1st, 2009 in General
Popsci drew our attention to an interesting project in the UK which is designed to study how robots could communicate using motion. BERTI is designed to make human scale gesturing, meaning he shrugs his shoulders, waves his arms and opens and closes his fingers just like a human does when speaking. While many robots can talk and move, it is difficult to get them to move similar to a human skeleton. However, BERTI’s torso has 36 degrees of motion, such as an elbow joint. There are nine in each hand alone, meaning the mechanics are hugely complicated.
We found a YouTube video of BERTI in action putting his skills to the test with a game of ‘rock, paper, scissors’ at London’s Science Museum. Scientists believe that the project could lead to technology hat could assist sufferers of stroke or Parkinson’s disease.
