[Robotgroup] watching this will make you sweat

[Shane Geiger]

http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/14/knife-hand-chop-bot-automatically-threatens-your-digits/

We can't stress our "don't try this at home" attitude strongly enough
towards readers over this piece of robot hackery from the 5Voltcore
collective, called the knife.hand.chop.bot. The basic premise is this:
the robot plays a game of "Mumblety-Peg," a test of courage wherein a
blade is brought down between your fingers at an ever increasing pace.
Of course, we've all played a round or two of this game with friends,
but it's unlikely that many of us have allowed a bot to play, much less
do all the shot-calling. The system manages to avoid slicing fingers due
to signals it receives from an onboard sensor which guides the knife,
however, it also utilizes contact sensors underneath the user's hand,
which can detect moisture (aka "nervous sweat"). The sweat triggers
"stressful" sounds via closure of the contacts, and can have an adverse
effect on the accuracy of the aiming mechanism, thus increasing your
stress, thus causing you to sweat, thus throwing off the aim, thus...
well, we're just going to keep our mitts off of the thing. Check the
video after the break to see what all the sweating is about.


-- 
Shane Geiger
IT Director
National Council on Economic Education
sgeiger at ncee.net  |  402-438-8958  |  http://www.ncee.net

Leading the Campaign for Economic and Financial Literacy