Posts Tagged ‘DLR’

DLR Engineer Hits Robot Like a Girl, Robot Takes it Like a Man

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

As we reported in the past, DLR is the proud creator of Justin a very advanced humanoid robot. Lately they have been working in a very robust robotic arm and hand system.

The videos below show how they punish their robots with hammers and baseball bats in order to demonstrate how well they endure the impact while retaining accuracy and calibration. Also notice how the hand can perform very similarly to its human analogue and uses flexible “tendons” to convey the motion.

These robotic limbs (especially the hand) look incredibly similar to something Skynet would design. One thing is for sure, the guy with the bat will probably loose his smile once the robot learns how to take the bat from him and retaliate.

Via IEEE Spectrum and Hack a Day.

Robot Catches Two Balls at Once, Humans Wish They Could

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

It becomes more and more obvious that robots outperform humans in tasks that require speed, precision and complex computations. The video below featuring Rollin’ Justin, a mobile version of the well known Justin humanoid robot from DLR, catching two balls that are thrown at it.

An interesting fact is that all the complex computations, that lead to predicting the ball trajectory and positioning the hand accordingly, is off-loaded to a more powerful (stationary) computer which in turn sends the digested results to the robot.

Via IEEE Spectrum.

DLR-Biped, Justin Gains Legs But Looses Arms

Friday, August 6th, 2010
DLR-Biped Schematics

DLR-Biped Schematics

DLR‘s Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics unveiled the DLR-Biped a walking biped platform that could very well become Justin’s legs (given they can support its weight).

This outstanding platform was developed in a mere 10 months and uses technology borrower from previous DLR projects, such as Justin‘s arms. As shown in the video below the robot can walk autonomously wile dynamically keeping its balance even when pushed.

Via Plastic Pals (via DLR).

Justin the humanoid robot ready for space

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Justin

Justin is a German humanoid robot created at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics in Wessling, Germany.

The robot comes in several versions, including one particularly intended for space with super easy to use arms and hands, a head and a torso.

The aim of Justin is to go and repair satellites in space.

The humanoid can be controlled remotely from Earth with a similar telepresence exoskeleton that a human wears.

The advantage of this method is that the operator sees in real time what the robot does (thanks to two cameras) which gives much more precision in movement.

Man robot collisions

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

The German Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics has run some experiments on man-machine collisions.

Here, it’s rather a case of a Kuku robotic arm against a mannequin head (the same as those you see in car crash-tests).

This type of experiment enables the development of anti-collision and safety mechanisms to be implemented in industrial robots in order to minimize the number of potential injuries.

These tests follow those we mentioned to you two weeks ago in this blog.

via

Anti-collision safety on an industrial robot

Friday, May 14th, 2010

The German Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics presented, at the IEEE 2010, a safety demonstration with an industrial robotic arm.

In this case, they wanted to study the contact between a robot handling a sharp tool (scissors, kitchen knife, saw, scalpel) and human skin in order to prevent accidents that could happen in a factory.

A leg of pork was therefore used at the start of the video then the safety was tested on a man’s arm.

When the anti-collision option is disabled, it’s catastrophic, with the sharp tip going right into the leg of pork.

On the other hand, when the safety is on, the robot doesn’t damage the skin at all (entrance = 0 mm)