Festo Robotic Arm

[semenza]

    I saw an episode of NOVA Science Now yesterday that featured Festo and there robotic elephant arm and fish fin gripper! Very cool !!  [cool]

    The fish fin / tail gripper is the "hand" for the arm and is towards the end of the same video.

   

Seth

 

[rst]

Great stuff!!

 

[SittingElf]

Very interesting!

Not long before humans will be unnecessary! [blink]

Cheers,

Frank

 

[#Tee]

ya i saw this epi on netflix...pretty cools!

 

[Mr Heavy]

Damn!

I saw that episode of Big Bang Theory - the one featuring Howard, a night alone with his robotic arm and the trip to the Emergency room...

I can't possibly watch ANY robot-arm film ever again.

 

[Shane Holland]

Festo does some really cool stuff, for sure. A lot of nature-inspired robotic automation. Check out their YouTube channel for more interesting contraptions.

https://www.youtube.com/user/FestoHQ

 

[Euclid]

Thanks Shane.
Just for interest's sake, what is the connection between the current Festo (the automation and robotics people) and Festool? Their namestyles appear to be derived from a common visual identity, but I can see no commercial link via ownership or holding company. 

 

[peter halle]

I am sure that Shane is still snoring  [poke].  Festo was the name of the entire tool company.  The electric power tool aspect was split away and a new company was formed called Festool.  Festo is now the automation and robotics end. 

Peter

 

[aas]

darn!

I saw that episode of Big Bang Theory - the one featuring Howard, a night alone with his robotic arm and the trip to the Emergency room...

I can't possibly watch ANY robot-arm film ever again.

+1  [big grin]

 

[AlexThePalex]

Festo is now the automation and robotics end.  Both (and several other companies) are part of Tooltechnics.

Festo is not part of TTS anymore, it's an entirely separate company now.

 

[peter halle]

Thank you Alex.  I altered my post.

Peter

 

[Euclid]

Peter, Alex - thank you.

I figured there had to be a connection with the old 'Festo' brand, notwithstanding the current incarnation not being linked to TTS - yet their logotypes look as though they belong to the same corporate identity, which is what puzzled me.

There are some fascinating things on their YouTube channel; I love the AirRay and the robotic Kangaroo (and their workshops too). 

 

[AlexThePalex]

What I find fascinating is that bird they made, for as far as I know the first mechanical man-made object that can fly exactly as a bird, by flapping it's wings. That will spur some interesting developments in aviation technology.

It has been tried many times before, but they never got the power to weight ratio right. Festo finally did. Not to diminish their other inventions, but I find this quite a bigger achievement than a kangeroo hopping around or a model of an elephants trunk.

And it's good to see a European company finally working on robotics, because we're lagging way behind Japan.

 

[Euclid]

To be fair to Festo, I think the process behind making the Kangaroo work is what's important, not the finished product - achieving the control of balance changing continuously, somewhat akin to creating a bipedal walking robot.

The lessons learnt from that exercise are presumably very useful - the Kangaroo, like the other gimmicks, birds, fish, dolphins, balloons, is simply to publicise their work and to provide pre-set challenges to create technologies and solutions for as yet undefined problems.

I hadn't looked at the 'Bird' one... I think I've seen something similar achieved before, but much more crude - not on that scale or with that degree of control or grace - or with that duration. That's very impressive.