Programming robotic arms just got a lot easier thanks to the efforts of Bernhard Kleiner and his team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA in Stuttgart.

The key breakthrough is a set of inertial sensors in a hand-held input device, and software that ties their inputs together to reconstruct a detailed model of body motion.

The device records precise motions without complicated calibration or configuration — the user makes a gesture, and the robotic arm mimics it. The device can be attached to the thigh of  a patient to determine their gait for control of active prosthetic devices and for physical therapy, for example.

Programming a robotic arm to be used in a factory assembly line, for example, is usually a complex process, involving a hand-held baton with a marker point, a laser beam reflected from the marker, and a camera to recreate the motion, after careful calibration and configuration.