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Robotic Arm Reacts on the Spot, Catches Objects in Under Five Hundredths of a Second

A robotic arm developed in the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne is capable of reacting on the spot and grasping objects with complex shapes and trajectories in less than five hundredths of a second. The arm measures about 1.5 meters long and keeps an upright position. It has three joints and a sophisticated hand with four fingers. "Increasingly present in our daily lives and used to perform various tasks, robots will be able to either catch or dodge complex objects in full-motion," says Aude Billard, head of LASA. "Not only do we need machines able to react on the spot, but also to predict the moving object's dynamics and generate a movement in the opposite direction."