Engineers Turn Robot Arm into F1 Ferrari Simulator
Sometimes it's hard to believe that researchers are contributing to science instead of just having a blast.
As Paolo Robuffo Giordano and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Tübingen, Germany, would have it, scientific research means riding the business end of a giant industrial robot arm while playing video games.
Quote from the article:
Source: Engineers Turn Robot Arm into F1 Ferrari Simulator
As Paolo Robuffo Giordano and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Tübingen, Germany, would have it, scientific research means riding the business end of a giant industrial robot arm while playing video games.
Quote from the article:
| The CyberMotion Simulator is basically a full motion simulator adapted to a racing car game. Players sit in a cabin on a robot arm some 2 meters off the ground and drive a Ferrari F2007 car around a projected track with force-feedback steering wheel and pedals. The aim is to make the experience as realistic as possible without having to buy a real F2007, and to test the simulator with an environment that requires sudden, massive acceleration. The robot arm is a Robocoaster, a modified six-axis Kuka KR 500 that can lift up to 500 kg. It's usually found in amusement parks and normally does not allow users any control. Giordano and his collaborators want to use it to study how we perceive motion; their paper, though, deals with the mechanics of the simulator. "A motion simulation system is a fundamental tool to understand how humans experience the sensation of motion," he says. "By running suitable experiments, one can gain better insights into the cognitive processes of the human brain." |
Source: Engineers Turn Robot Arm into F1 Ferrari Simulator
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