Machine vision does something useful!

Life is full of little irritations. I suppose I could try to adopt a more “Zen” attitude and accept that my co-workers may not have my wants and needs at the top of their list of things to think about, but as an engineer I’d rather put my faith in technology.

This is why I was thrilled to read about the “Whiteboard Erasing Robot.” You know the scenario: you take a visitor into the conference room, only to find that someone has left the whiteboard covered in details of upcoming product launches. You grab the eraser and wipe away furiously, knowing that all the while Mr. Visitor is trying to memorize details of when Project Beta will be launched.

So I’m going to be first in line for this erasing robot. Seriously. I’m very impressed with the ingenuity of the inventor, who I understand is still in High School. He’s combined an Arduino controller with RoboRealm software to create a vision guided robot. (Thanks are due to the team at RoboRealm for linking to the above story – good job guys!)

What’s he (or she) going to do for his next trick?