Roborouter ~ MIT's Image-Guided Powertools

Anne Eisenberg writes nice story in NYTimes, For the Home Workshop, a GPS for Power Tools, on Alec Rivers and Ilan Moyer's roborouter image-guided powertool based on their MIT research on position-correcting tools with Fredo Durand...

"As soon as you put the tool on the material, it knows where it is,” Mr. Rivers said. “The screen shows you the path you are on, as well as the pattern you’re going to cut.” When the bit comes within a quarter inch of the pattern, tiny motors in the device go to work, keeping the tool along its correct route. Ilan E. Moyer, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at M.I.T., designed the hardware for the latest prototype of the device. “If you are straying from the path, going to the left,” failing to follow the exact design, he said, “the motors will shift the tool to the right to keep it on the path.” Mr. Rivers said that “all you have to do is get within the ballpark freehand.” Then the “tool GPS” and small-scale computer adjustments guarantee a precise cut."