Modding a Kinect for robots has been done before. The device usually serves as a navigational tool to help the robot ‘see’ objects and avoid them, but controlling a robot with a Kinect is an entirely different matter and Taylor Veltrop has done just that. The software engineer used the Kinect to teleoperate his KHR-1HV robots arms. The ‘Veltrobot’ uses a Roboard for ‘its’ brain, which is essentially a small computer, instead of Kondo's microcontrollers. “The Veltrobot is controlled by a Microsoft Kinect in a master/slave fashion. I'd like to take this further and do something about leg control and gripper control too. Also if I change how the joint angles are calculated the positioning of the robot's hands could be improved. This could be achieved by tracking my hand positions instead of my joint angles, and then sending the robot hand position goals and letting it choose its own joint angles. Trying to use my joint angles directly on the robot doesn't work one to one because our skeletons are different and compromises have to be made” said Veltrop. For more information please visit Taylor’s website at: http://taylor.veltrop.com/front.php
Eavesdropper