Controling robotic arms is child's play

"The input device contains various movement sensors, also called inertial sensors," says Bernhard Kleiner of the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA in Stuttgart, who leads the project. The individual micro-electromechanical systems themselves are not expensive. What the scientists have spent time developing is how these sensors interact. "We have developed special algorithms that fuse the data of individual sensors and identify a pattern of movement. That means we can detect movements in free space," summarizes Kleiner.