Robot HandwritingWired UK

Researchers have developed robots that can imitate human movements when it comes to actions such as handwriting or reaching for objects in a bid to make it easier for humans to predict their behaviour.

A team from the University of Göttingen worked together to ensure that machines mimicked human movement. Most human movements involve a multitude of individual actions, connected to each other automatically. When children learn to write they guide the pen hesitantly at first before learning to connect the individual letters smoothly.

Machines, on the other hand, work through a chain of distinct movements. But a team, working under Florentin Wörgötter, have now altered the mathematical basis of control commands in a few, but crucial, details. The team modified an existing algorithm called Original Dynamic Movement Primitive framework to ensure that the movement sequences were joined in a "co-articulated" way -- meaning sequences that overlap at the joining point without stopping. The old formulation would see the robot slow to a brief halt between actions, giving it a staccato flow.

This allows the robot to combine actions such as writing multiple letters connected to each other dynamically.

"In ten to fifteen years service robots will play a major role, so it is important that machine movement becomes more and more human-like, and thus predictable for us, so that we can work together without accidents," said Wörgötter.

Check out the video of the robot mimicking the handwriting of Professor Johanna Wanka above.


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