Scientists from the University of Maryland, in the United States, developed a sophisticated 3D printed robotic hand that is agile enough to play Super Mario Bros. and other video games on the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and To win.
To make this possible, the engineering team he first had to design an integrated fluidic circuit that would allow the hand to operate in response to the force of a single control pressure.
In other words, according to the report published on the website of tech blogthe Maryland researchers were able to apply low pressure to cause the first finger to press down on the controller and make Mario walk, while higher pressure resulted in a jump.
The robotic hand passed level 1 of Super Mario Bros. in less than 90 seconds
Later, the robotic hand was guided by a set program that autonomously switched between off, low, medium and high pressuresallowing him to press the buttons on the controller to successfully complete level 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. in less than 90 seconds.
The YouTube channel of the A. James Clark School of Engineering, attached to the University of Maryland, shared a clip on the video playback platform showing how the invention works.
“A robot plays Super Mario Bros. and wins. A team of Maryland mechanical engineers created a smooth robotic hand agile enough to manipulate a game controller.”, he adds in the description of the video.
For his part, Rubén Acevedo, recently graduated PhD and co-first author of this creation, expressed: “Several groups have recently tried to harness fluidic circuits to improve the autonomy of soft robots, but the methods for building and integrating such fluidic circuits with robots can take days or weeks, with a high degree of manual labor and technical skill.”.
