Let's check out 7 excellent applications of robotics in 2022

In 2022, Elephant Robotics launched many new products and projects, including myPalletizer, mechArm, and myBuddy, etc. This year, we have also received many projects with our robotic arms from users. Here are the excellent application cases we select to share.

Photographic lighting [1]

Building an excellent lighting configuration is very important for the photographer, which improves the photos quality and reduces the time spent post-processing. Researchers from the Digital Nature Group of the University of Tsukuba, and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, worked together and used myCobot to proposed a novel computational framework to help photographers concentrate on the look of images instead of the parameters. In this framework, the parameters including orientation, intensity, and color temperature can be set in a program. So photographers just need to concentrate on evaluating and choosing a desirable lighting configuration among options supported by the system.

Imitation industrial application [2]

Many people use collaborative robotic arms to learn robotics. EasyKids Robotics and CNX Software worked together to launch an imitation industry project by myCobot. In this project, they installed a camera module and a suction pump on the robotic arm, and used Image Thresholding (A technique for separating an object from a background image), and they wrote a Python project in the VSCode (A source-code editor that can be used with multiple programming languages), to allow the robotic arm detect the objects in different colors, and select and move the objects to the bucket of the same color. Combined with a convery belt, this robotic kit can achieve multiple applications to help users learn more about the industrial robotics, such as the automatic intelligent recognition (color, objects,etc.)

E-Health robot arm [3]

The collaborative robotic arm has been widely used in multiple fields, such as household, education, scientific research, etc. At the same time, robotics plays an increasingly important role in the medical field. Jaime Andres Rincon Arango, a researcher from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, used myPalletizer and others hardware to create a teleoperated robotic system to perform a basic remote medical check, such as taking a phonocardiography signal.

Connect-4 player [4]

Dave, a famous robotic engineer on YouTube, has created a project named Robot VS. Children. In this project, Dave programmed the robots to play games with his children. In one video in this project, he made an accessory, installed it on the mechArm, and programmed the mechArm to play Connect-4 with his boy. It is very interesting that the robot performed excellently, beat the kid, and sneered at him.

Robotic painter

More and more robots are being shown in commercials, exhibitions, tech expos, etc. One user programmed myCobot Pro as a robotic painter and showed this project at a commercial exhibition. In this project, the user just needs to upload the image to the computer, and the robotic arm will automatically recognize the drawing path and start drawing the image.

Xylophone player

One of our users also showed our robot in an exhibition. The robot he showed is myBuddy, a dual-arm robot we launched in August. This user installed the hands on the end of arms and programmed myBuddy to play the songs by xylophone. In this project, he used the bulit-in cameras of myBuddy to recognize the keys in different colors, and then recorded the RGB of colors. And the data will be converted into coordinates in the system, and be showed as the color numbers for users. Users can make a song according to the color numbers, and the system will automatically recognize and decide use which arm to play the corresponding keys. Also, users can program the speed when myBuddy is performing.

Hair washing 

At a beauty salon in China, myCobot is used to wash the hair of customers. They created a massage device and mounted it on the end of a robotic arm. With the drag teaching function, the user drags and records a trail of the robotic arm performing the massage action, and then the robot can repeat the action it just recorded. The robot has a stable working speed and a large working radius to provide the right massage service to customers.

In the projects from our users, our team has also learned a lot of practical knowledge, including how to improve our products and perfect our robotic system software. In the future, we will keep concentrating on providing better products to meet the various needs of users and help them achieve more projects and applications.

Reference

[1]  Kenta Yamamoto, Yuki Koyama, Yoichi Ochiai. Photographic Lighting Design with Photographer-in-the-Loop Bayesian Optimization. 2022.10.04.https://digitalnature.slis.tsukuba.ac.jp/2022/10/pitl/

[2]  JEAN-LUC AUFRANC. Review of myCobot 280 Pi robotic arm with Python and visual programming. 2022.11.01. https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/11/01/review-of-mycobot-280-pi-robotic-arm-with-python-and-visual-programming/

[3]  Jaime Andres Rincon Arango. Robot Arm, Like a Doctor. 2022.07.31. https://www.hackster.io/jarain78/robot-arm-like-a-doctor-027156

[4]  Dave's Armoury. Connect 4 Robot - Robots vs Children. 2022.09. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMqqluIozDU&t=596s