Posted on Monday, April 07 2008 @ 0:31 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Yahoo Games
reports engineers at the U.S. Department of Energy have created a bomb-defusing robot that can be controlled with the Nintendo Wii remote. The engineers claim the Wii remote makes it easier to control the robot and allows operators to focus more on collecting data:
The military has been working with the hardy Packbot for some time now, using the wheeled robot to sniff out and defuse explosives and landmines for U.S. soldiers. Traditionally, control over the bot has been accomplished with a joypad not unlike the kind that comes with an Xbox or a Playstation. That might seem like an easy fit for today's tech-savvy soldier, but head engineer David Bruemmer notes otherwise.
"Our tests show 90 per cent of the operator's workload goes into driving the robot rather than keeping an eye on the sensor data," he said.
By virtue of its unique motion-detection capabilities, the Wiimote has streamlined the process and allows operators to focus more on the collected data and less on how to steer the Packbot. Bruemmer and his crew have also tweaked the Wii's vibration feedback technology to "buzz" the operator when the Packbot detects something of interest in the field.
