Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
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Enjoy today’s videos!
Researchers at the RAI Institute have built a low-impedance platform to study dynamic robot manipulation. In this demo, robots play a game of catch and participate in batting practice, both with each other and with skilled humans. The robots are capable of throwing 70mph [112 kph], approaching the speed of a strong high school pitcher. The robots can catch and bat at short distances (23 feet [7 m]) requiring quick reaction times to catch balls thrown at up to 41 mph [66kph] and hit balls pitched at up to 30 mph [48kph].
That’s a nice touch with the custom “RAI” baseball gloves, but what I really want to know is how long a pair of robots can keep themselves entertained.
[ RAI Institute ]
This week’s best bacronym winner is GIRAF: Greatly Increased Reach AnyMAL Function. And if that arm looks like magic, that’s because it is, although with some careful pausing of the video you’ll be able to see how it works.
[ Stanford BDML ]
DARPA concluded the second year of the DARPA Triage Challenge on October 4, awarding top marks to DART and MSAI in Systems and Data competitions, respectively. The three-year prize competition aims to revolutionize medical triage in mass casualty incidents where medical resources are limited.
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