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Engineering Students Build Robotic Foosball Players

Posted by Soulskill on from the taking-over-the-world-one-table-at-a-time dept.

Andre writes "As their final-year project, an eight-man team of fourth-year electrical and computer-engineering students at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, constructed a robot-controlled, motor-and-actuator foosball table capable of playing against human opponents in a two-on-two fashion; one mechanical player controls two defensive rods (goalies and full-backs) and the other controls two offensive rods (half-backs and forwards). They considered the computers 'medium-skilled' players in that they were very competitive against beginners and fairly competitive against intermediates."

4 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Easy and done before in Austria by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I don't understand why this is a /. story.

    This has been done before by an Austrian University?

    http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Tischfussball-Roboter-aus-Oberoesterreich--/meldung/135390

    (German)

    1. Re:Easy and done before in Austria by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Link, for completeness' sake:

      http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~kiro/english/index.html

  2. Incorrect terminology used.... by 117 · · Score: 2, Informative

    'Full-back' refers to a wide defensive player in football - the second row on a foosball table features two full-backs and two centre-backs, and should be referred to as 'defence'. 'Half-back' refers to a position which isn't even used in football these days - the third row on a foosball table is simply 'midfield'.

  3. Re:Foosball? by $lashdot · · Score: 4, Informative

    For the Brits here, Foosball is table football. No idea why it's called that over there. Maybe from the German, Fußball?

    "Foosball" does come from the German word. The game increased in popularity in the USA in the wake of WWII, although the first American patent dates to 1901. One helpful article to read is http://www.foosball.com/learn/knowledge/chp1hist.html from the book The Complete Book Of Foosball (Lott & Brainard, 1980)

    I've never heard an exact explanation for why Foosball (or just Foos) specifically caught on as a name. Maybe "table soccer" is just too awkward. Obviously, Americans couldn't call it "table football," since football is a different sport there.