Catching a ball is no problem for most people. Getting a robotic arm to catch a ball using a catcher attachment is a bit trickier. To find out just how tricky it is - or to see if it’s easier than they think - visitors to the Sensor+Test trade fair in Nuremberg should head for the Fraunhofer booth, Booth 202 in Hall 12. There, researchers will be presenting an industrial robotic arm with six joints, at the end of which is a catcher. Visitors can control the arm using a hand-held input device: When they move the hand holding the device, the robot emulates their movement. “The input device contains various movement sensors, also called inertial sensors,” says Bernhard Kleiner of the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA in Stuttgart, who leads the project. The individual micro-electromechanical systems themselves are not expensive. What the scientists have spent time developing is how these sensors interact. “We have developed special algorithms that fuse the data of individual sensors and identify a pattern of movement. That means we can detect movements in free space,” summarizes Kleiner.
