If a soldier has to worry about which joystick controls steering and which controls speed he’s going to spend less time thinking about the bomb he’s trying to disarm. David Bruemmer and Douglas Few, both engineers from the US Department of Energy’s Idaho National Lab in Idaho Falls, have modified an iRobot Packbot to be controlled by the popular ‘Wiimote’ Wii controller. “Our tests show 90 per cent of the operator’s workload goes into driving the robot rather than keeping an eye on the sensor data,” says Bruemmer. Having to navigate a robot is most certainly an Excise Task that should be minimized.
Frankly, I’d like to see a mobile industrial robot arm going into battle armed only with a massive sword. A couple of guys modified an industrial robot to be controlled by Wii and wielded a sword.
In a twist, at least one robot has been adapted to use the Wii using Legos and a straight-up NXT brick. WiigoBot plays the popular Wii bowling game by swinging the Wii and actuating the release trigger at the appropriate time. Perhaps this is just one way that robots will be able to interact with other devices in the future. Doors, light switches, and vehicles could plausibly be controlled by the sensor-packed device. A robot with a proficiency in managing a Wii controller could universally interact with all of them.
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