Clearpath Integrates Thalmic Labs' Myo Alpha Unit with Autonomous Robot

(Kitchener, ON, Canada - February 20, 2014) Kitchener based companies and University of Waterloo startups, Thalmic Labs and Clearpath Robotics have joined forces to prove gesture controlled robots are possible. Thalmic Labs, developers of Myo Gesture Control, released the Myo alpha developer unit to Clearpath Robotics for testing. Clearpath has successfully integrated the Myo armband with their Husky Unmanned Ground Vehicle to start, stop and drive the vehicle using simple arm movements.

"There are a lot of interesting applications for using the Myo for robot control and our team is very excited to have the opportunity to work with the Alpha dev unit," said Ryan Gariepy, Chief Technical Officer at Clearpath Robotics. "We've been eagerly following Thalmic's progress and we've got a dozen different robots here we could do some more tests with."

Clearpath Robotics used the Robot Operating System (ROS) for most of the integration work. The Husky software package exposes a standard Twist interface, so the team was required to convert the Myo data into that format to create compatibility. The team did so by using their experimental cross-platform serialization server in socket mode.

For Myo integration and development, Clearpath Robotics added standard Windows Socket code into the provided Thalmic example code, and then determined the proper mapping from the Myo data to the desired robot velocity using timeouts and velocity limits. Further details on Myo integration cannot be released at this time.

A video of the Myo-controlled Husky is available here http://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=2rtLmZLrHeQ

About Clearpath Robotics

Clearpath Robotics, a global leader in unmanned vehicle robotics for research and development, is dedicated to automating the world's dullest, dirtiest, and deadliest jobs. The Company serves robotics leaders in over 30 countries worldwide in academic, corporate, industrial, and military environments. Recognizing the value of future innovation, Clearpath Robotics established Partnerbot, a grant program to support university robotics research teams, internationally. Clearpath Robotics provides robust robotic vehicles and autonomous solutions that are engineered for performance, designed for customization, and built for open source. Visit Clearpath Robotics at www.clearpathrobotics.com, follow us on Twitter @clearpathrobots or like us on Facebook.