Besides making games, I (along with Simon Wittber and Adrian Boeing) have also recently been working at Transmin on the control system for a pair of trash grapple robots to be commisoned into a recycling plant in the UK. The robots weigh 15 tonne each and have a reach of about 17m. Both robots are situated inside a factory within reach of each other, where they will be used to process household waste. Because of the confined space for operation, an anti-collision system needed to be implemented that prevents operators from colliding the robots together or with objects in their workspace. That's the technical gist of it, now for the fun part.

The the project is winding down and soon the robots will be dismantled to ship to the UK. Simon and I felt it would be a great opportunity to do something a little different with the robots. We decided to see how easy controlling the robots with a Wiimote would be!

Within a few hours, and with the help of CWiid, Wii had the robots under our Wiimote control. Now the robots could be controlled with a simple gesture of the Wiimote! With a little practice I think the Wiimote would be my preferred option for control.

Just goes to show how game changing the Wii really is, and with Natal and the PS3 Motion Controller I think it is a sign of things to come, and not just in game control.

-Dan Adams