Portal turret comes alive in robot project
Robotics student builds a turret that talks, tracks movement with a laser-guided system, and fires foam bullets at its target.
(Credit:
Video screenshot by Christopher MacManus/CNET)
Portal found a way of taking automated gun turrets and turning them into something adorable. That's why we were super excited when we saw that someone had built a working one in real life.
As a final project for his graduate mechatronics class, a robotics student at Pennsylvania State University has built a fully functioning turret that talks, tracks movement with a laser-guided system, and fires foam bullets at its target.
The turret sees the world via a Webcam, controlled via a script written in MATLAB. Most importantly, it sings out all of the adorable phrases we've come to enjoy hearing while we're being shot at in a test chamber.
Now that the technology is working, the student is building a shell to make it look more like the Portal turret.
This isn't the only real-life Portal kit we've seen. Last year, we were delighted to see that Atlassian built its own Portal-style videoconferencing system to connect its offices.
This story originally appeared on ZDNet Australia.
