Engineer and students create robot that physically strikes back at virtual reality game

YouTuber and robotics engineer James Bruton, along with students at the University of Portsmouth, built a robot that, if you hit the target in the accompanying VR game, bounce back into real life.

The robot moves on wheels of a wheelchair and strikes the player of the vr game with pneumatically powered boxing gloves. Vive trackers monitor the movements of the robot, player, bat and shield. The accompanying VR game was developed by students at the University of Portsmouth.

The whole thing is controlled by an Arduino Mega interface and if the player hits the robot in the vr game, it knocks it back in real life. James Bruton is a robotics engineer who posts his creations on a YouTube channel. Previously, he made a robot chef and a robot dog, and he recreated the famous Transformer Bumblebee.