Slashdot Mirror
Kiro, the Foosball Robot
JasonFleischer writes "Although the official line from the RoboCup competition is that robots should be ready to challenge humans on the soccer
field by the year 2050, we don't have to wait that long to see man-machine
competition in the bar.
Researchers in Germany have developed a table football (foosball, table soccer, whatever) robot. The human challenger(s) take the red team, while the machine works the blue side, using an overhead video camera to see what's happening on the table. The conference paper shows that while the machine generally wins against the normal bar-amatuer it has no chance against a human grandmaster. But these kinds of things are always improving, after all look how big a deal the man-machine chess competition turned out to be. So perhaps the current table football world champions should be watching their backs."
...someone else to kick my ass at that game.
The fact that there is a human grandmaster of foosball somehow makes my life seem less meaningless. :)
Bringing computers into pubs? No, No i tells ya. I work with computers all week. Theres a few things i like doing at the friday happy hour with my work mates. Thats, getting cheap or free beers and playing pool.
:/
This thing doesnt bellong in a pub. It belongs in a pinball palar... Or whatever you call those things...
Computers in pubs? pfffffffft... why dont i just start bringing beer to work?
Actualy, i make a good point, why dont i?
My point is the pub is my one place to ungeekatise myself... bringing a computer to a pub might have the oposite effect.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
hmmm... if I were wanting to create the ultimate computer foosball player, I'd just have the machine rotate all the handles at about 12000 rpm, sliding them back and forth at a 100 cycles per second.
The first time the human opponent catches the ball off the forehead at 1200 fps... FORFIET! The machine wins again.
but that's just me...
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
I don't think this is the way it's supposed to go. I haven't seen Terminator 3 yet, but I'm pretty sure Skynet doesn't begin with a withering attack on humanity's carefully-crafted illusion that foosball is anything other than spinning the handles as quickly as you can and screaming, "BOOOYAH! IN YOUR FACE!"