We’re not sure who or what this tool will ultimately target, but Alec Rivers, a Ph.D. student at MIT, developed a self-correcting router that only needs to be loosely guided by hand and can perform intricate cuts to a preset path. The system is actually fairly compact and uses computers to guide the router along its path. All you need to do is keep the mechanism in the ballpark. Which really begs the question: when will this be available for vehicles… but I digress…<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n The system uses an integrated camera which shows the path to be cut and there are motors which “float” the mechanism to keep it perfectly aligned to the cutting path using motors. Rivers calls is a “tool GPS” – which is a pretty good way of describing it.<\/p>\n What will likely NOT appeal to professional woodworkers is the fact that, instead of carefully looking at the wood you are cutting, you are to instead focus on the LCD display, making sure you are staying within the limits of the system’s tolerance for correction (represented by a circle\/target on the center of the screen). If you keep the center dot on the cutting path, the system does the rest – and you can literally see in the video, the router moving within the mechanism, keeping itself perfectly on the complex cutting path (in this case, a map of the United States).<\/p>\nAn Automatic Self-Guiding Router<\/h2>\n