Video: Command and Control Robots with Microsoft Surface
Posted in: Displays, Microsoft, R&D and Inventions, research, Robots, Today's ChiliAfter Microsoft’s Surface multitouch table premiered, early implementations were limited: retail stores, hotels, restaurants, bored executives goofing off in board rooms, and university researchers modeling totally kickass Dungeons & Dragons games.
But why waste your time controlling virtual armies of NPC henchmen when you can control REAL armies of tiny robots? Or giant ones? That’s the Doctor Doom move. You don’t even need to peek at your WWDDD? bracelet from inside your hideous metal mask.
Nobody at the UMass-Lowell Robotics Lab (as far as I know) has a hideous metal mask. And they haven’t even built the robots yet — so this is still at the D&D level of virtual awesomeness/villainy, not cartoonish super-villainy.
But there’s important, amazing, yet simple tech at work in this proof-of-concept demo. The researchers use multitouch to send the robots scurrying around to execute commands, but also to pan and zoom a map of where they’re operating, create virtual subcontrollers, and display text and video data, all within the same interface.
The lab’s work focuses (among other things) on human-robot interaction, robot vision, interactive learning, and disaster response. The ease-of-use of multitouch controls is clearly valuable in all of those scenarios. As Evan Ackerman gushes at BotJunkie, “It’s not even that there’s anything that innovative going on here, strictly… It’s just that Surface is able to merge existing hardware and existing controls into a new interface, which makes all the difference.” Ackerman also notes that very little innovation in robotics research is happening at the UI level; the fact that a consumer/commercial product can be introduced on this end solves a slew of practical problems for existing robotics, not to mention potentially putting control of the technology in the hands/fingertips of many more people.
Now imagine if this research merged with the retail applications of Surface already in use. You go to a bar, touch a table, order a drink — and a robot navigates the room and brings it to you.
From UMass-Lowell Robotics Lab via the Microsoft Robotics Blog and BotJunkie.
See Also:
- D&D + Microsoft Surface = Unheard-of Levels of Radness
- First Look: Microsoft Milan Surface Computer — A Table That Knows What’s On It
- Microsoft to Install Surface Systems in AT&T Stores
- Microsoft Shows Off Surface in Sheraton Hotels
- Quadrocopters Work Together to Lift Loads, Destroy Mankind
- Robo Spiders Are Multilegged Mechanical Marvels
- Gallery: Robot Bartenders Sling Cocktails for Carbon-Based Drinkers
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