JediBot

Next to MR (Minority Reports), Star Wars seems to be the next biggest Kinect project meme. Which in my geek mind is just logical. Who doesn't hope for a future with droids to do all our dirty work, use the Force to vanquish your enemies and engage in to lightsaber battles?

Lightsaber + Kinect + robotic arm = JediBot

By combining a dexterous robotic arm, the movement tracking capabilities of Microsoft’s Kinect sensor, and some clever software, students at Stanford University have created what can only be called a JediBot. The arm is equipped with a bright red foam-dampened lightsaber, but for all intents and purposes it is trained to kill the opponent: a student with a green lightsaber (shouldn’t it be blue?)

Basically, the robot arm is pre-programmed with a bunch of “attack moves” and it defends by using the Kinect to track the green lightsaber. To attack, JediBot performs a random attack move, and if it meets resistance — another lightsaber, a skull, some ribs — it recoils and performs another, seemingly random, attack. It can attack once every two to three seconds — so it isn’t exactly punishing, but presumably it would only require a little knob-tweaking to make it a truly killer robot.

Project Information URL: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/90204-lightsaber-kinect-robotic-arm-jedibot