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Deep Green - A Pool Playing Robot?
o0zi writes "A Canadian scientist has created another game-playing machine, designed for a far simpler purpose than chess: playing pool. The world's first pool-playing robot consists of a slim box that glides along tracks above a pool table, and shoots using a camera-guided cue. Deep Green pots only half the shots it plans for - supposedly the same as a below average player - but this is expected to improve."
My first thought was that it should be very easy to get a higher percentage of shots, but I guess that a lot of shots require 'english' to make, probably something that is not easily computed.
Having recently tried snooker for the first time, I can appreciate the difficulty!
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Also there is less recognition for shots in pool because strategies are different compared to where you play. The base rules system is easier than chess, but you have near-infinite possibilities for aligning shots, taking shots and winning. If you're playing someone who can sink the table on a streak, the robot had better be able to do the same. Plus there's breaking... does the bot know how to break a rack and sink a couple each time? If not, it's not a very good pool bot, whereas it doesn't take much these days to create a chess bot that is *amazing* at chess by even pro standards. They have all the stats from previous games to go by. Stats won't help a robot with billiards, as there are no coordinates recorded to base new calulations on. Perhaps there *should* be? I think it would be fairly easy to record coords from each pro game from this day forward and the billiards industry should invent a table that does it. That would be awesome for so many reasons.
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Interesting question: could you ever be truly happy with a 'copy-cat' human-like robot (or dog, cat) as a partner/friend, that looks like, smells like, behaves like a real human?
Personally, I will always prefer the real thing, flesh and blood, but a good copy could be fun company...
I would have to disagree with you here. Even without mastering spin and such like given a high enough degree of accuracy it is likely that a very good execution plan could be calculated.
I think the real issue here is firstly getting the vision system coupled with the actual physical movement in an accurate enough manner.
In some ways this game is much smaller than chess, although you may say that there are infinite variations and whatnot you forget that we already understand the physics of the pool table incredibly well. Rather than searching forward like in chess a pool playing robot will have the luxury to decide which ball it wants to pot and then extrpolate back using simple newtonian mechanics.
I think their 5 year estimate to get a competitive pool playing machine is a pretty good guestimate. I know from experience that robots are notoriously difficult to get doing things consistently (an undergrad project was building a vision system which could get a robot arm to guide a ball on a string through s small loop) and i think that getting the whole thing consistent is probably going to be the main source of work.
I appreciate that youve been playing for 20 years and have invested a lot of time in it but remember that machines attack the problem in different ways. I have been solving differential equations for 10 years for well over 2 hours per day but its pretty straightforward to write a program which can solve them faster and more accurately.
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I must admit that is pleasing to have our project on slashdot. It's been a fun project and is getting me a M.Sc out of it :P.
Having a pool table in your lab is a lot of fun on friday afternoons.
For those /.'s interested the robot should be playing a game entirely on its own in the spring. We are still very much in the early stages of development, but we have made lots of progress over the last 16 months from when the gantry was delivered.
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