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Tic-Tac-Toe-Playing LEGO Robot

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the step-right-up dept.

David Primo writes "TechEBlog has an interesting article on a Tic-Tac-Toe-playing LEGO robot named WOPR — created by Bryan Bonahoom. It uses built-in sensors and a custom program to challenge humans. Video included. From the article: 'The NXT display also enables the inclusion of instructions to the user on resetting the robot. This allowed WOPR to run unattended.'"

11 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Old news by Bob+Cat+-+NYMPHS · · Score: 5, Informative

    Charles Babbage designed one of these.

    http://www.adit.co.uk/html/noughts_and_crosses.htm l

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  2. tic-tac-toe is so 1983 by legoburner · · Score: 4, Funny

    Joshua: Greetings, Professor Falken.
    Stephen Falken: Hello, Joshua.
    Joshua: A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

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    1. Re:tic-tac-toe is so 1983 by svunt · · Score: 2, Informative

      Um, I think the guy realised that when he called the robot WOPR Would you like to play a game?

    2. Re:tic-tac-toe is so 1983 by BGraves · · Score: 2, Funny

      Now that would be impressive. A lego robot that could get bored by Tic-Tac-Toe and learn to play chess.

  3. WOPR? by ndogg · · Score: 4, Funny

    I wonder if I can reprogram it to play a nice game of Global Thermo-Nuclear War.

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  4. Tic-tac-toe by Zouden · · Score: 3, Funny

    How appropriate that the demonstration video ends in a draw...

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  5. The robot missed by Augusto · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Seems like it need to be tweaked so that it "drops" it's own pieces closer to the "board", as you can see at the end that one of the pieces misses it's spot.

    Pretty neat, would have liked to see if the robot can actually win, if he can start (and the human's first move is not the center spot)

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  6. Strategy by not-admin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In a game of Tic-Tac-Toe, the only way to defeat an opponent who knows how to play the game is to hope he misses something or to hide your moves from him. On a 3x3 board, it's easy for a microprocessor to be programmed with all possible countermoves.

    Most tic-tac-toe games end in draws, even human-human ones, for that reason.

  7. Lego? Pfft. by multipartmixed · · Score: 4, Informative

    A bunch of MIT students created a tic-tac-toe playing computer a LONG time ago, out of *Tinker Toys*.

    I know it was a long time ago, because:
    a) I saw it in the Boston Computer Museum in 1991 and it had been "broken for years"
    b) Nobody plays with Tinkey Toys anymore... And hasn't since about 1975.

    Ah, here's a neat article from Sci Am in 1989 (probably the one I read which caused me to seek it out in 1991): http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/472_html/Intro/Tin kertoyComputer/TinkerToy.html

    For the impatient, there is a photo on the last page.

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  8. Re:In a really SMART robot... by nebbian · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So in other words, AI was solved on the first of April, 2005?

    And that didn't ring any bells?

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  9. tic tac toe vs. connect 4? by Main+Gauche · · Score: 2, Informative

    Haven't folks already programmed LEGO bots to play connect four? Some can even beat kids who play against them.

    OTOH tic tac toe has almost no complexity, so what's the big deal?