Gesture-driven robots are nothing new, but this robot arm, developed at Japan’s Tsukuba University, stands out with some impressive tech. The system lets humans control the arm by analyzing the movements of their hands and arms based on a video stream (the arm then replicates those movements almost in real-time).
What makes this robot unique is that the two cameras it uses not only measure movements, orientation and position of a human’s hand but also the shape – over 100 times a second. For example, the robot is able to detect a human clenching his fist or grabbing an object (and to act in the same way).
The next step for the researchers is to modify the arm so that it can be used to operate 3D-based displays in the future.
This video (shot by Diginfonews in Tokyo) provides more insight: