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Kiro, the Foosball Robot

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the he-shoots-he-scores dept.

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."

3 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. I can't tell from the article... by MeanE · · Score: 5, Interesting

    but does the computer have full control over all the umm (forgive my foosball knowledge) "handles" at all time. I mean part of the game is having to let go and grab the next one. Kind of an unfair advantage if the computer does not have to do so.

  2. Re:Awful Idea by Hellkitty · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Roger that. One of my biggest hobbies is playing bar games. But you are right - I don't play foosball for the opportunity to beat a machine. I do it because it is something fun to do with friends when you may or may not be intoxicated.

    Chess is a thinking game. The idea of a machine being able to out think or out strategize a human fosters competition, so that's where the excitement in that lies. Foosball is simply hand eye coordination. I have no doubts that a machine will eventually be able to out manuever me in hitting a ball with a little plastic man on a rod. It his hardly the technical coup of a computer beating one of the best chess players in the world.

  3. It's quite good. by tequesta · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've played this thing last February at the Hannover industry fair. I'm by no means a tournament-level player, but I'm not crap either, so I think I can judge this thing's playing power. It's not very good at planning shots (in fact, it's crap at that ;-)), but it's amazingly fast. Better reactions than I have ever seen in a human. And keep in mind, this was a year ago. They use motion prediction to increase the frame rate, so that isn't the limit.

    I do think that they can make a tournament-level player out of this thing. Which isn't the motivation, of course, but give them two or three years.