A robot with a gripper held a kick-target for kids at a martial arts studio. The idea is a personal training partner that learns your height and angle preferences, eliminating the need for a human to adjust the target. The catch: protecting the metal gripper from missed kicks, making it durable enough for repeated punches, and justifying the cost of an expensive robot in a high-impact environment.
And honestly, based on the kind of the stories that I've heard you tell about all sorts of things that you do with robots, the passion is definitely there. You know, one, I was telling Courtney kind of as we were preparing for this that I always learn new applications or new ideas of ways to apply robots in situations. And you were just telling me this morning about applying robots in martial arts.
So I would love to come up with this. full product, to be honest. And I'm sure, like, I haven't fully conceived it yet, but I made a video, uh, with my old boss Greg McIntyre, uh, several years ago. And I say made it with him as in he went on vacation and I used the robot, uh, while he was on vacation, but he didn't fire me over it or anything. Yeah, great. Like, this is kind of cool. What did you do? Um, I had a robot grabbing a kick target and moving around, and I was, I was boxing kind of with the robot kicking the target. And then this Saturday I finally had a chance to bring the robot with me to my martial arts studio. And I thought I was going to kind of take it in the back. And I showed a couple of the instructors. And they ultimately brought the children's class over, like, hey, check out this robot. So I had basically my hand over the one part of the robot that's not collaborative, which is the 2-finger gripper. The 2 fingers were made out of metal that were holding the target. OK. So I basically had my hand over that part. But the robot was just moving around for the kids. And they were boxing with the robot. And they loved it. So my thought behind that was multiple times when you're practicing with a human partner and they're holding a kick target up for you, there's like an angle for every kick and for you specifically, for your height and for how you throw your kick that you're kind of trying to work with your partner. If they know you well, you kind of adjust them, hold it right. You teach the robot that position once and it's going to go to that spot every single time. So I always have this thought of having a robotic training partner that just presents targets to me perfectly. It would be a fun thing to execute.
Everyone can become Jackie Chan with their personal training robot, right?
Precisely. I need to cover it with a pool noodle or something because if you miss the target and accidentally kick the robot— oh yeah, it's gonna hurt. So that's the only part I haven't really thought my whole way around. Plus, I don't know how you're gonna feel about buying an expensive robot and then kicking it and punching it.
Well, my expectation would be, of course, that it is, you know, designed for shop floor environments where things can happen.
