Last week MyGamer had an interesting and rather silly report come into our collective hands. Two engineers, whose intellectual aptitude is matched by their love of gaming, had an idea that would echo in the halls of mad science if was on a larger scale but in this context seems whimsical. The idea, in short, was this: why not construct a robot that could duplicate the gestures made on the Wii remote? These two men took a Kuka16, which is a medium sized industrial robot..essentially like the kind you see in auto plants, but smaller. Through a good deal of work and a matching number of technological jiggerypokery they configured the robot to be controlled using the Wiimote. The arm could hack and parry with the sword they strapped to it's arm and, when the fight was over, engage in a lively game of tennis with it's own racket attached to it's arm in the same way. The resulting creation has been dubbed the Wiibot and a video of how it came to life is available if you just follow the link here http://www.usmechatronics.com/usmgarage/WiiBot.html

Now wouldn't that make for a fun gaming tournament?

Nick McCavitt at nmccavitt@forumwizard.net