This video was from a talk I gave at Hackers v26 in 2010. I talked about re-coding a Motoman an industrial robot Mark Pauline got. It was used in a movie with Ben Affleck and then at a company that made prosthetic elbows. The robot was outfitted with cadaver arms to test wear and tear on the prosthetics. Now it’s part of the SRL arsenal. There was still a program loaded onto its memory called SAWBONE.
I met with a ninja friend to get some realistic sword moves but since the robot can go in a 270 degree arc in a second, Mark decided it was too dangerous (could cut a human in half) so we opted for a baseball bat. Still dangerous but not as graphic should an accident occur.
The Motoman uses its refrigerator-sized controller as ballast so it doesn’t hop and topple over from the non-standard, non-compliant moves I re-coded it to do. Mark also outfitted the exposed portions with special military grade aluminum from tank armor to protect the innards from the usual flying debris and other robots at a typical SRL show.
For the SRL show in Santa Rosa it decapitated Shannon O’Hare’s robot even after losing the bat to the Dual Mules. People said the moves made it look “really creepy”.
More info on that SRL show An Explosion of Ungovernable Rage can be found here.
Karen Marcelo 