Robot Steals the Show

At the National Instruments booth at Photonics West, convention-goers could play against a robot in the game of Guitar Hero on the Nintendo Wii. The robot was made with the company's Compact Vision System, which includes a camera and a compact image processor.

As the video game is running, the camera captures the notes that are displayed on-screen. The image processor, running a program in LabView, subsequently directs robotic fingers to play the notes on a toy guitar that is connected to the Wii system.

This setup was assembled by Cyth Systems of San Diego, a group of engineers that assembles components for factories. The company calls it the CythBot. The idea is to show what the company can do, such as rigging a system to move cans of Coca-Cola.

David L. Shenkenberg
david.shenkenberg@laurin.com