Willow Garage PR2 May Be Most Intelligent Bottle Squeezing Robot In Existence
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Wednesday, 16 of September , 2009 at 3:20 am
I don’t know exactly how, but Willow Garage has programmed a gripper to be able to tell whether or not a bottle is full, empty, open, or closed just by squeezing. I’m not sure I could do this with 93% accuracy, could you? If I had to guess, I’d say that with a fine enough measurement of back pressure from the bottle, you might be able to get a pretty good idea of what its state i… For example, the bottle that resists gripping pressure the most is probably full and closed. After that would come (probably) empty and closed or (maybe) full and open, followed by empty and open.
As cool as this is, if it’s how it works, it’s a fairly restrictive method, relying on a compliant bottle and with a binary lid that doesn’t exhibit states like “closed but not sealed.” But still… That’s a heck of a lot of information out of a little squeeze.
Speaking of grippers, the PR2 robot has also been outfitted with a new quick-change end effector, i.e. a system to quickly and easily swap out “hands” to adapt to different tasks, something that pretty much every single sci-fi robot has but has been somewhat elusive on real robots. Video of that, after the jump.
Comments (4)
Category: General
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Comment by Veltrop
Made Wednesday, 16 of September , 2009 at 10:25 pm
93% accuracy with Odwalla bottles or any PET/plastic bottle? I’m guessing the former.
I don’t have audio on this computer, don’t know it it was mentioned in the video.
Original link is here: http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2009/09/17/bottle-half-empty-half-full
Comment by Gizer20
Made Thursday, 17 of September , 2009 at 1:04 pm
To sense if the bottle is empty or not, use the idea of a capacitor.
If the bottle is empty the charge in the ” condensator ” is diferent if the bottle is full. With this method , in theory will be able to tell which liquid is in the bottle because the charge that the “condensator ” keep is different from one to other.
I think that’s the concept that robot use.
Comment by Evan Ackerman
Made Sunday, 20 of September , 2009 at 11:10 pm
@Veltrop: I don’t think they specified, but the implication is that it only works on bottles that can be squeezed. Thanks for the link; it wasn’t up on their site yet when I posted.
Comment by forex robot
Made Tuesday, 17 of November , 2009 at 2:26 pm
Interesting post on a robot