High speed robotic arm

A team of researchers from the Swiss State Institute of Technology (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL) has created a high-speed robotic arm that can catch objects that are thrown into it in the air.

The system evaluates the shape of the object, its flight path and position in space at the interception point.


The highlight of the project is the system's learning ability - at first the person, moving the manipulator towards the flying object, shows the program a very rough, approximate scheme of actions. After that, an independent "refinement" of the algorithm is carried out. You can watch the result in the video.

At the moment, this system has two main disadvantages:
1) tracking of objects does not occur directly from the manipulator, but with the help of several cameras located in different parts of the room.
2) objects must be equipped with infrared markers so that cameras recognize them.