[Robotgroup] Fest Robotic Arm

[Edwin Wise]

Oooo, an industrial arm using McKibben muscles!  I made some of these  
once, they are neat, but a bit annoying to interface with mechanically:

http://www.festo.com/INetDomino/coorp_sites/en/ 
ffeed49f2394ea43c12572b9006f7032.htm
(tinyurl:  http://tinyurl.com/23hl92)

(site SLOW; slashdot, pow! bang!)

Shadow Robot has been working with these a fair bit too:

http://www.shadowrobot.com/

Here's another link about McKibbens:

http://brl.ee.washington.edu/Research_Past/Biologically_Based/ 
Device_01_McKibben/Mckibben.html
(http://tinyurl.com/368s54)

The keen thing are, apparently, the piezo proportional valves they  
are using... I need to read more and see though.  I saw one company  
back when I was working on Boris that was taking printer heads (the  
old dot-matrix mechanical ones) and turning them into proportional  
pneumatic valves, but they vanished.  Proportional valves are  
_expensive_ , $400 or so, so if Festo has improved that field, it  
would be very neat.

This, on the heals of the Hydrogen Peroxide "jet engine" arm, is fun  
news.  I may have to get off my duff and build another robot!

Edwin!
---
Edwin Wise, Rogue Technolgist
Simulated Reality Systems, LLC
www.simreal.com