This robot can untangle a tangle of headphone cables in two clicks

The data cable is still wound up in a ball when you've obviously sorted it yourself. It doesn't look like the headphones have just been taken out of your bag.

Now fear no more! The University of California has developed a robot that can easily straighten out data cables.

One user "hated" the results of this research.

Couldn't we have trained this machine before the Air Pods came out?

With this robot, there's no more fear of unruly cables. How does the robot work to sort out these tangled wires?

How it works

The two-handed robot senses the threads to be handled and uses two grippers to straighten them out.

The special construction of the robot and its various systems play an important role in the process of sorting out the threads.

Firstly, there is its gripper structure. This gripper (PC) tentacle can either be gripped in a pinch-pinch manner, or in a cage-cage manner, or a combination of both (pinch-cage).

In pinch-cage, the line cannot slide at will, whereas in cage cage and combined cage cage, the line can slide. Cage gripping can be used in untying operations, while combined pincer and cage gripping is generally used to detect if the wire is tangled.

The multiple gripping modes allow the robot to perform a wider range of operations and are well suited to tidying longer lines.

Next is the robot's sensing system, which can tell the 'state' of the thread during the tying process: how it is wound, how many knots it has and where ・・・・・・ it is tied, thus influencing the robot's subsequent actions.

Specifically, the sensing system includes endpoint detection, real-time line tracking, knot detection, etc. Endpoint detection means sensing the two endpoints of the wire to be tidied to ensure that the next step can be taken.

Real-time wire tracing is the detection of the entire wire by means of sensors, starting at the starting point and stopping when the trace reaches the intersection.

Node detection is used to detect the number of nodes in the entire line, and simple intersections are not counted.

Once the "state" of the wire to be processed is sensed, it is time to proceed. What are the operations (commands) that can be performed by the two grippers when sorting?