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."

Comments

Awful Idea

[Bame Flait]

This will be fun for about ten minutes, until the machine is either impossible, or laughably easy (more likely) to beat.

People in bars want games they can play socially, with other people. The people who would really be in to something like this would stay home tweaking their Debian installation and picking at their hemorrhoids.

Re:Awful Idea

[brendotroy]

This will be fun for about ten minutes, until the machine is either impossible, or laughably easy (more likely) to beat.

(sarcasm)
Right, that's why Golden Tee and a host of other bar - arcade games have been such a failure. (/sarcasm)

Golden Tee type games offer 2-player/1-at-a-time gameplay and are still hugely popular. This would let you and your mate (the only one who came out to the pub with you that night) to play a rousing game of foosball together against the "computer" at a skill level you chose.

I'm not saying we're going to see coin-op Kiros anytime soon, but the idea is not so preposterous.

My $.02

Missing the point

[tomcio.s]

I think everyone so far has missed as to why exactly this is such a big deal.
It is not important what game the robot mastered. What is important is the fact that the robot is capable of on the fly visual/apendage (arm) coordination.
That means we have technology that will allow for application of this in other areas (think retrieval robots for disaster zones, etc.)
That is what makes this story so exciting.

No way.

[vitaflo]

Having played foosball my entire life, I doubt they can make something to beat anyone of real skill anytime soon. When you get really good at the game, it's not about seeing the shot to block it, because you rarely see it (if you're good enough) because it's so fast. No, you're going on anticipation, of what the player may do. It becomes a sort of guessing game at that point.

This is where the stragegy in foosball really comes in. They key is to have a bunch of various shots you can use but that all "look" the same on set up, so the player has no idea where you're going to go with the shot. If they guess wrong, you score. Of course, this takes a lot of skill to do well (and just as much skill on defense to defend).

Because the robot is using a camera, and because the action is so fast, I can't imagine it stopping a good push shot, or even a good pop or bank shot for that matter. Similarly, I can't see it setting up good shots that a human couldn't pick out everytime. Though I think it would be easier to teach a robot offense, than defense.