Official News page 11

BOFFIN TRIUMPH OF THE WEEK: THE ROBOT OMELETTE-MAKER

by Hazed

We've had robots that build cars for years now. Recently, robot vacuum cleaners became all the rage. With robo dogs and robo cats, not to mention robot actors (see last week's Star at http://www.ibgames.net/fednews/081130/official08.html) it can't be long until robots can do anything that humans can do.

Adding to the robot skills available, Japanese scientists have come up with a robot that can make omelettes. Yaskawa Technology taught the droid to bake the perfect Japanese omelette - mixing batter, eggs, cheese and cabbage together, frying one side, flipping it over and frying the other side to absolute perfection. (Doesn't sound like what I would call an omelette, but let's not quibble about details...)

According to the company's website, the MotoMan SDA10 has seven axes of movement per arm and a single axis for base rotation. It can hold up to 10kg of weight on each of its arms, which would be a very heavy omelette indeed. The arms have a forward reach distance of almost a metre.

So why is such a heavy duty bot mucking about cooking omelettes? It was doing it to show off its capabilities at a recent robot fair in Osaka. In the real world, it's suitable for a wide variety of boring assembly jobs, as you can see from the video on this page.

Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page