Pentium Throws a Fastball

phillippaxton writes: "Abner Doubleday lives in the 21st century. Two mechanical engineers have gotten together and created what may be the perfect pitching machine, powered by a P3 850MHz computer. Using an eight-axis industrial robot, it has the ability to throw practically any pitch within the strike zone. Custom-built software enables you to choose the type of pitch by pointing at a touch-screen, setting the speed, location, handedness, as well as fastball, curveball, slider, slurve, changeup, cutter, sinker, splitfinger fastball or knuckleball. There's also a database of 2500 preset pitches in a database."

Comments

Great.

[Wakko Warner]

Until a floating-point error causes it to bean Mike Piazza.

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Re:Is it really a faithful reproduction?

[general_re]

We will not have the perfect pitching robot until it also scratchs itself for a minute and a half in between pitches.

Come on. It's got to do much more than that to be the perfect pitching robot. It has to be able to show up at spring training 200 pounds overweight yet still bitch about "only" making $6 million a year. It has to be a named defendant in at least one paternity suit. It has to be able to snort cocaine for years, come close to blowing its entire career, and then suddenly find Jesus.

This thing's still got a long way to go.

Re:The real innovation here...

[rnturn]

``Viola: A database in a database.''

I think you actually meant to say:

``Viola: The beefier cousin of the violin.''

Cheers...
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Newsradio?

[evilpenguin]

I immediately thought of the Newsradio "Space" episode. Joe is thawed out in the far future and immediately asks who won the World Series since he went into hibernation. I forget the exact words, but it was something like "In 2021 it was the Yankees, 2022 the Braves, 2023 the Robots, '24 the Robots, Robots, Robots...."

Made me laugh...

Re:Age of Spiritual Machines

[hugg]

They still haven't made a computer that can hit the ball... this requires significantly more smarts to do in the general case.

Specs

[pnatural]

are here. note the $175,000 pricetag and the $18,000 maintenance fee. must be former IBM engineers. :)

3/4

[kajoob]

I've batted against this thing at the Vet in Philly where they have one set up, and I must say that is extremely realistic in that if you can see the pitches hand and you can watch for the seams instead of the old goofy BP balls. The only complaint is every pitcher and ever pitch has the same release. Like the article says there is no 3/4 release and there are no sidearm or submariners, but on the whole it's an amazing device and mixes up the pitches well. If you're near a ballpark in your hometown, I recommend trying it.

Re:Science and sports don't mix.

[aonifer]

I have to disagree with the sediment. I think they mix quite well.

That's not a very concrete response.

Futurama flashback...

[szcx]

Bender: Clem Johnson? That sack of skin wouldn't have lasted one pitch in the old Robot Leagues. Now, Wireless Joe Jackson, there was a blern-hitting machine.
Leela: Exactly. He was a machine designed to hit blerns. I mean, come on, Wireless Joe was nothing but a programmable bat on wheels.
Bender: Oh, and I suppose Pitch-O-Mat 5000 was just a modified Howitzer?
Leela: Yep.
Bender: You know, you humans are so scared of a little robot competition you won't even let us on the field.

I want to mount one of these on my car.

[Gannoc]

Anyone tries to cut me off, they get a 90mph chunk of American culture through their windshield with an accuracy of up to 5.00000001 decimal places...

This is how the terrifing future depicted in Death Race 2000 began. Will we all just sit by idly while it happens?

I blame Intel.

Re:Science and sports don't mix.

[Fatal0E]

Your post is awfully narrow minded. If not for the content of it then for the Go Red Sox part! :) Go Yanks BTW!!!

I'm only kidding but you saying we're wasting money on sports research is the same as those rednecks who say NASA is the black hole of money. Why do I say that? Well, my sister-in-law had to have arthroscopic surgery on her knee after a skiing snafu and she is 100% back after only 6 months. Where do you think they perfected that technique? Why are those sneakers you wear into work everyday so comfy? When we send food to Africa how do you think we know how to pack as much nutrition into as small a package as possible? Those are only the tip of the ice berg (thats my excuse for being unable to come up with anything else :) ) but sports research does have a realistic ROI in at least some cases.

Someone has to ask..

[CrazyLegs]

Does their code throw exceptions?

That's not even funny.