Inside an Experimental Robotics Class: A Robot Sketch Artist, a Robot That Plays Dominos, and More

Each year, Stanford Professor (and IEEE Fellow) Oussama Khatib introduces a new class of students to control theory and sets them loose on a room full of robot arms, including the Kuka LWR, the Kuka IIWA, the Barrett WAM, and the Kinova Jaco. The students in the Experimental Robotics class are charged with making the robots do something, typically, something that requires computer vision and force control. Said Khatib: each robot team had to develop "a strategy to draw or to play or to track, [because] the heart of robotics is perception connected to action." Typically, these industrial robot arms are programmed to perform factory tasks, like assembly, welding, and painting. The Stanford students get a rare opportunity to use them in more imaginative ways.