Robot arm takes engineers for a virtual reality Formula 1 ride (video)
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As it turns out, industrial-strength robot arms are good for more than amusing hijinks and the occasional assembly line — a team of researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics have turned a KUKA KR 500 into the ultimate Formula 1 simulator ride. Outfitting the six-axis, half-ton lifter with a force-feedback steering wheel, pedals, video projector and curved screen, the newly-christened CyberMotion Simulator lets scientists throw a virtual Ferrari F2007 race car into the turns, while the cockpit whips around with up to 2 Gs of equal-and-opposite Newtonian force. There’s actually no loftier goal for this particular science project, as the entire point was to create a racing video game that feels just like the real thing — though to be fair, a second paper tested to see whether projectors or head-mounted displays made for better drivers. (Projectors won.) See how close they came to reality in a video after the break, while we go perform a little experiment of our own.
[Thanks, Eric]
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Robot arm takes engineers for a virtual reality Formula 1 ride (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 Aug 2010 18:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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