Taylor Veltrop had the first ROS 3D contest entry with his teleoperation control of a humanoid KHR/Roboard robot. He wasn't content to leave it at that: he beefed up his teleoperation system with Wiimote and leg-based control. He also is running it on an Aldebaran Nao.
One of the difficulties in using the skeleton tracking libraries with the Kinect is that you do not get much information about the hands of the operator. For those trying to use the skeleton tracking to control a robot's arms, this creates a pickup problem: you can get the arm to location you wish to grab an item, but you don't have the control you need over the angle of the hand and the opening and closing of the gripper to complete the task.
Taylor solves this by enabling you to use Wiimotes in each hand. With this additional controls, the operator can seamlessly use the wiimotes to transmit the additional information about the correct hand position, and you can use the buttons on the Wiimote to perform additional operations, like opening and closing grippers.
Taylor also collaborated with Patrick Goebel to add in leg controls for moving a robot. Placing one leg forwards or backwards move the robot in that direction. Placing a leg to the side makes the robot turn.
You can watch Taylor's new video above, where he puts the Nao teleop through it's paces. If you have ever wanted to see a Nao wield a knife, play chess, or grab a tissue out of a box, check it out.
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