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By combining a dexterous robotic arm, the movement tracking capabilities of Microsoft’s Kinect sensor, and some clever software, students at Stanford University have created what can only be called a JediBot. The arm is equipped with a bright red foam-dampened lightsaber, but for all intents and purposes it is trained to kill the opponent: a student with a green lightsaber (shouldn’t it be blue?)

Basically, the robot arm is pre-programmed with a bunch of “attack moves” and it defends by using the Kinect to track the green lightsaber. To attack, JediBot performs a random attack move, and if it meets resistance — another lightsaber, a skull, some ribs — it recoils and performs another, seemingly random, attack. It can attack once every two to three seconds — so it isn’t exactly punishing, but presumably it would only require a little knob-tweaking to make it a truly killer robot.

To defend, the JediBot uses the Kinect sensor to pick the green lightsaber out of the background (that’s why it isn’t blue), and performs depth analysis to work out where it is in comparison to the robot’s lightsaber. If you watch the video, the tracking is remarkably fast, and it’s probably very hard to actually land a blow on the robot. A video of the JediBot is embedded below.

The JediBot was created during Stanford University’s three-and-a-half-week Experimental Robotics course. Other students on the course used similar robotic arms to draw, take photos, play golf, and even flip burgers (and add ketchup!) A video of these other robotic applications is embedded below the JediBot video.

After last month’s story about the robot that can debone a pork ham, and last week’s revelation that IBM Watson might soon be taking over the role of salespeople and technical support personnel, you have to wonder whether we humans will perform any physically arduous or taxing tasks in the future.

Read more at Spectrum or Stanford University News