Future Robotics Technology Center (fuRo), a division of the Chiba Institute of Technology, has developed a master-slave controller called WIND (Wireless Intelligent Networked Device).  It’s a series of small (50 x 35mm) System on Chip processors coupled with three-dimensional position sensors mounted to a vest that senses your body’s movements. The movements are converted into robot commands which are wirelessly transmitted via Bluetooth and acted out by a robot (in this example, fuRo’s small humanoid Morph 3).

While this system converts gestures into commands, actual motion-capture systems have been developed for controlling the arm movements of Wakamaru and a whole-body system is being researched for Mahru III at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, though accuracy and speed remain difficult issues.  A couple of videos of the system in action (including glimpses of fuRo’s other robots), are tucked after the break.

[source: fuRo (JP/EN)]

Videos:

WIND Robot System technical overview:

WIND demonstrated live: