this was fun and quick !

i need to go clean up the code so the “documentation” post later but here’s a demo

back story

I worked on this short coding challenge for many hours, got nowhere and gave up. Then in the same amount of time got this robot demo working …

Maybe 2 hours setting up a safety plane in ur5, 2 hrs on the actual hand coordinate to robot coordinate code, and 2 hrs taking videos and showing friends heh.

next steps thoughts

honestly with the word salad machine’s help (pointed out I could use servoL, aka giving it velocities, instead of position coordinates moveL) I finished this much faster than I thought and now I’m at a loss as to what to do next _{(then my brain was like “oh, it was so easy, the only thing it demoed was me not having enough experience to realize how simple it is” thanks brain that’s the whole point of why we’re doing this, to gain more experience)}

i could make the code accept z as well (right now it’s limited to a xy plane for safety), add kd (right now if you swing your hand around too fast too many times the robot starts to wildly swing in bigger and bigger circles), try rewriting with moveJ and seeing what happens, make a gripper, switch to a wrist-mount camera, make the robot high-five and fist bump, switch back to small arms and collect sock data (probably the main issue is I should set the small arms up with my desktop instead of my laptop so I’m not having to plug in 6 cables each time to go between ur5 and the desktop arms), giving the robot expressions… _{putting aside thinking about what tasks are “how to job” since that will sap all the joy out of robots again}

i think i was most excited about a robot that could fold my laundry and also do other tasks like put my tools back or sort screws. it’d be fun to have it make me a sandwich. then there’s another category of what other people would enjoy — people find interactive demos fun, and this hand-tracking fell under that.

Hmm, people also find food fun. So perhaps getting the UR5 to make sandwiches should be my next goal!!