Photonics has already made profound contributions to such
areas as medicine, energy, and communications to make our everyday lives more
efficient. (Hence the name of this blog.) People in all walks of life benefit
from the incorporation of photonics technologies. We look forward to future
advancements when the technology may help find a cure for cancer, monitor and
prevent climate change, and pave the way to other advancements we can’t even
visualize yet.
But here’s a photonics-based invention -- already demonstrated
– that breaks ground in a new area: the backyard barbecue. Talk about hot fun
in the summertime!
The BratWurst Bot made its appearance at the Stallwächter-Party
of the Baden-Württemberg State Representation in Berlin. It’s made of off-the-shelf
robotic components such as the lightweight Universal Robots arm UR-10, a
standard parallel gripper (Schunk PG-70) and standard grill tongs. A
tablet-based chef’s face interacted with party guests.
Two RGB cameras and a segmentation algorithm with background
subtraction were used to localize each sausage on the grill. A special challenge
was the changing color of the sausages. As one was completely cooked and
served, the robot replaced it with a new one on the grill.
The BratWurst Bot was developed by the FZI Research Center for InformationTechnology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; FZI also has a branch
office in Berlin. A press release from FZI points out that hardware
and software components of the grilling robot are also applicable to other processes like cooperative assembly or difficult manipulation tasks.
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