• Watch-Controlled Gripper Bot Is All Kinds Of DIY Cute

    Devin Coldewey

    Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. → Learn More

    Tuesday, March 29th, 2011


    I love that there are tons of tinkerers out there just putting together robots for no other reason than “hey, this might work.” Home hacker Lars Kristian Roland made this one, a simple rover bot with a gripping claw (it runs on modular hardware and an Arduino, naturally) — but the twist in this case is that it’s controlled by a Chronos watch that has a built-in accelerometer and antenna.

    Not exactly the most precise controls I’ve ever seen, but that’s all adjustable in the software (Hack A Day points out that nonlinear interpretation is the way to go) and I love the idea of controlling it with wrist movements (you could rotate the axes so you could wear the watch).

    Skip to about halfway through to see it get the thing and do a little dance.

    Details of the project, with parts and links, can be found at Roland’s blog.