3/2/2004: Robotic pumpkin carving

I'm late today so no time to process stuff, have to just get one out of the stuff I've saved for a while and not posted.

This one is from October! But it's still kinda interesting.

full story

God, you Americans will invent or try anything.
Cool.

What will they think of next

And to think I have been using a knife all this time.....:p

What a waste. That machine is capable of carving super complex and super cool pumpkins. It sounds like they're going for speed instead of cool.

Neat idea in theory, but in practice it's got to be a bitch.

Computer controlled robots are great at pecision work done to strict tolerances. Pumpins, on the other hand, grow in the dirt to very organic shapes. They are not produced to exact tolerances.

You would have to re-program the computer for each pumkin's unique shape to take full advantage of the "skills" the robot has to offer. This is an example of how the old fashioned way is far superior to the new approach.

The only work-around would be to have some sort of feedback for the robot. A three dimensional scanning of each pumkin to map its surface and then plot a facial design that could fit on that surface.

Also, they need a prettier way to mount the pumkin to the work table.

They could laser-project a face on the pumpkin and have the robot follow the laser line. That would be guaranteed to look right from at least one angle.

With a catalog of facial features they could position the robot for each feature where they want in on the particular pumpkin.

My son's first pumpkin carved at age six looked better than that...

it's an ABB robot, likely an IRB 6400... 6 points of articulation...

certainly capable of greater precision work, especially with some sort of vision-guided robotics software. The software can easily be trained to recognize points of selection upon a given surface, and act accordingly, but unless they're willing to x-ray the pumpkin, I would imagine it will be much more difficult than that: Pumpkins vary greatly in terms of thickness..


funny story: I was at a tradeshow where ABB was demoing an IRB 7600 by attaching a 1000kg engine block to the end of the robot arm, and then whirling it around in all sorts of *very* high-speed patterns, showing off the strength and precision of arm..

The robot was pneumatically bolted to the floor, and the arms was capable of withstanding the pressure... Unfortunately, they miscalculated the torque that was getting generated, and the screws that attached the engine block to the flat steel panel on the end of the arm began to shear.

On the 3rd day of the show, an ABB engineer showed up, got a nice close look at wtf was happening, and freaked out, shutting the whole thing down... He estimated they were no more than an hour or two away from the engine block coming flying off, flying 40 or 50 feet, and killing a dozen or so people.


industrial engineering... good times.

'Unfortunately the robot does not gut the pumpkin'.....oh my god, pumpkins have guts???? So you Americans eat pumpkin gut pie....I am disturbed.

Glorious photo of puking pumpkin! Here in Zumerzet we eat chicken and pig guts known locally as 'chitterlings', liberally soused in vinegar and washed down with cider or beer. Yummmmmy.

In America that's called "chitlins"!

I've never had it though... more a southern US thing.

yeah, in the northeast, that's called "fucking disgusting!"

Quote:

Originally posted by lumberjim yeah, in the northeast, that's called "fucking disgusting!"

Fried chicken gizzards: heart, livers. Good stuff.

Then there's always fresh Tripe 'n Onions

i'd rather toss a salad