Real Steel Becomes Reality With Real-Time Robot Control

When the movie Real Steel came out I was with everyone else laughing at the ridiculousness of a boxing robot. Ha! I thought, another dumb but fun movie from Wolverine.

But it looks like I was the fool for doubting Hugh Jackman, shame on me. Because in the movie some of the robots have a “shadow function” which allow them to mimic their human masters. And now it turns out that Anton Bogdanovych from the University of Technology, Sydney has developed a suit that lets you control a robot in real-time using full body motion capture. Previously he developed some software that lets you control a Second Life avatar through a motion capture suit, but this has far more real world implications.

Some of his suggestions are rescue missions and rallying in disaster situations, but getting a robot to do your bidding would be great too. It could bathe the dog, wash the car, play tennis, undo hard-to-open jars of peanut butter and, of course, box.

[via New World Notes]

@stewart23rd