RE2 has given two autonomous arms, with seven degrees of freedom and the ability to sense environments, to a robot named Robbie.
The day may be approaching when you go to get your car’s inspection and you are greeted by Robbie, who will look at the car, scan it, listen to it, and even pull the tires off of the mechanical automobile (to check the thickness of the squealing brake pads).
RE2 is the Pittsburgh based robotics company commissioned by DARPA, the Pentagon’s robo-loving research agency, to work on their Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) in the now two year old program.
The idea: give robots complex handling abilities so that they can perform tasks formerly reserved for those of us with dexterous hands and adept arms with little input from the human overlords.
Robbie has the build and visage of an Isaac Asimov vision, with his strong and bulky body and a creepy humanoid yet very machine-like head.
His mouth hangs ajar, like a ravenous child with an insufferable appetite and houses an LIDAR camera, while Robbie’s ears are aptly enough microphones for hearing sound and instruction. He even has two eyes that fix an impenetrable stare via a stereovision camera.
Three months prior to Robbie’s birth, the Pentagon revealed a one-armed bot that could staple paperwork for the endless bureaucratic regime and thereby remove many an intern’s painful muscle cramps.
Now Robbie is here to change car tires and film himself. The Twenty-First Century is well underway!
