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Robots Aim To Top Humans At Air Hockey
An anonymous reader writes "You probably knew that the Deep Blue supercomputer beats chess masters, and that last weekend a software robot defeated four poker champions. But you may have missed this one: a GE Fanuc robot is taking on humans at air hockey. The robot is powered by a special PC-board that can instantly switch between 8-bit and its 32-bit modes. The 8-bit version lost to most human players, but the 32-bit microcontroller has defeated even the best human air hockey players by a ratio of three to one."
I won't be worried until computers start to beat us at bear pong.
Bender: Now, Wireless Joe Jackson, there was a blern-hitting machine.
Leela: Exactly. He was a machine designed to hit blerns.
All I can say is:
"Good shot"
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I refuse to be impressed.
I can create a 2 bit air hockey robot that will lose to everyone but Butters!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Do you really want robots out there who can check you into the boards and beat you in a fight?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I'll be worried when they can beat us at Dodge the EMP Blast.
They could make a robot that beats human players at air-hockey but they were not able to make a watchable video or it in action? I guess it is all about specialization.
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This must be one of the best ways to get a research grant to pay for an air hockey table I've ever heard.
I Need someone to rebuild a Digitech Digital Delay pedal for me....for me...for me...for me.
Honestly, it's not as if some robot is paintaing abstract art or writing poetry here.
Robots exceeding humans in strength and precision when designed to do so is not news, it's our technology "working as intended".
If they didn't exceed human strength or precision, i'd expect articles like "engineer blacklisted as incompetent for designing defective robotics"
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Oh that is just getting so old. In this context however it could become so real.
On to the real subject...
"If droids could think for themselves we would not be here"
The day is coming when most if not all the routine and skilled functions of life will be carried out better by robots than by humans.
The last bastion for the human mind will be pure abstract thinking.
I do not even pretend to know what that new day will bring to the meaning of mankind when computers become better than the human mind at pure abstract thinking.
--
It is all in the sig. The rest is just window dressing
Or a game of soccer!
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Don't know which article you read, but:
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
First they're beating us at chess, then at air hockey... pretty soon they're rolling around yelling "EX..TER..MI..NATE", disintegrating us, and avoiding staircases.
This is how the human race ends, mark my words.
(Yeah, I know, the Daleks are supposed to be cyborgs. Roll with it, it's supposed to be a joke.)
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Wouldn't just setting the arm to oscillate in an arc in front of the the goal at a few thousand rpm make scoring against it impossible? (Not to mention the 200mph random rebounds coming off a blocked shot?)
Probably both. These microcontrollers are designed to calculate corrective action (often very small actions) to processes (such as pipe flow rates, temperatures, etc). When a process deviates from the setpoint, the microcontroller is supposed to calculate the correction (increase control output X slightly). I would say something like this would require some custom coding for the controller, but nothing too crazy. One of the harder parts would be coming up with a good input data method and formatting the input sensor data, since this is a slightly odd application for ths controller.
as an aside, the automation and control business is still a growing market, and they can never find enough engineers. Many of these jobs involve high travel if you're into that sort of thing.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I don't think I'd want to play foosball against a robot. Imagine how hard a robot would be able to jam the pole into your junk when he grabbed the wrong handle.
Why? It's a game where the puck is operating in a near frictionless environment. Hence, the speed can be computed as if it is linear. Of course a robot can more precisely measure time between samples and the location of an object on a fixed plane. So, the calculation of a puck's path had better be more impressive than a human player's.
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Although I agree that seeing hockey teams full of robots would be somewhat exciting (only to see them go up in sparks by a hard hit), I have to say that i personally would enjoy watching the sport with human players. Robots can not think for themselves (well, not yet anyway), so you would not see strategy that can change due to the changes on the field, or see some really great shots that only a human could pull off.
Humans can still score on it occasionally, so they're `beating' it in that sense. But overall, it still wins more than it loses.
Statistically speaking, if it averages 3x the score of it's opponents, a human should be able to beat it once in a while -- it just hasn't happened yet.
that wants to beat humans at air guitar. Then I'll be impressed.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
What's more, if the arms were standard and mass-produced, there's a great excuse for a little coding competition: Whose program will win when it's robot v. robot?
Lots of cool AI, artificial learning and computer vision would go into it, and the result would no doubt be fun to watch!
Good work, GE boffins. It warms my cockles to see our best minds conquer one more idle pastime that robots hadn't already been programmed for. When the Japanese finally achieve their ultimate goal of an android with functional genitals, those air-hockey robots will be left playing with themselves.
Only if they're fembots - ooooh
If you think that this is how poker works at a professional level, you don't know very much about poker.
Tells are a small factor at a professional level.
Good players already have a firm understanding of the pot odds and expected value of a call.
The major problem with writing a good poker program is that it can't be exploitable. If the program is too "tight", an experienced human player will realize this and can always raise with trash (because the program will fold), with a minimal chance of getting caught. If the program is too "loose", the human player can play good hands far more aggressively, knowing that the program will call.
This is a very general example. In reality, poker strategy is far more nuanced. But the basic problem that computers face is not being predictable. And, no, playing randomly doesn't help - it merely substitutes poor play for predictable play.
But air hockey is different. The board doesn't change from point to point. If your robot is fast enough to never miss a puck that's under a certain speed, and the puck never can reach that speed ... then you'll never score. Even once.
In short, your analogy falls short.
It's not at all like that. Chess is a positional game. The proper analogy would be that Deep Blue wasn't "unbeatable" because it's position was seen to be deteriorating during some stretch of the game.
Yes, if the most points you can score is around five, then you're fucked and it's unbeatable, yes.
However, that's not likely to be the reality. The reality is more likely to be that for each point, the computer has a 75% chance of making it and you have a 25% change of making it. So in the vast majority of cases, the computer is going to outscore you 3:1 ... but if you were to have an incredible string of luck, and hit your 25% 5 times in a row -- the computer probably couldn't catch up before you hit 7. Yes, the odds are certainly not in your favor, but winning (reaching 7 points first) is not impossible.
Now, as I understand it, the computer does learn, so it's skill at playing you should increase over time, but humans can learn too.
Either way, if you can ever score on the computer, then it's not unbeatable. It might require incredible luck, but if you can get lucky enough to score once, you can get lucky enough to score seven times in a row. (Though it seems to me that you ought to be able to make a computer that is unbeatable, just make it fast enough to deal with the fastest possible puck moving in the most crazy possible way. Then you'd never score on it, unless something actually broke/failed.)
I'll let your argument stand, but only because Federer lost.
You're getting off easy.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
From wikipedia:
Non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP) is an electromagnetic pulse generated without use of nuclear weapons. There are a number of devices to achieve this objective, ranging from a large low-inductance capacitor bank discharged into a single-loop antenna or a microwave generator to an explosively pumped flux compression generator. To achieve the frequency characteristics of the pulse needed for optimal coupling into the target, wave-shaping circuits and/or microwave generators are added between the pulse source and the antenna. A vacuum tube particularly suitable for microwave conversion of high energy pulses is the vircator.
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