Slashdot Mirror
Rise of the Ping Pong Robots
mikejuk writes with this excerpt: "Meet Wu and Kong — the latest in ping pong playing robots. They may not achieve exciting matches at the moment, but the fact that they can do the job at all is an indication of how fast things are moving. Unlike many other game-playing robots these two players are humanoid and are kitted out in old style Chinese jackets. They are about 1.6 meters tall and weigh in at 55 kilos. They track the ball with video cameras situated in their heads and then play a variety of strokes. They were developed by Zhejiang University and are currently turning up on the Chinese media as a novelty item. ... The current record for a rally is 144 rounds between robots. Humans can compete against them, but the robots lack the variety of shots that makes table tennis a game of strategy as well as accuracy."
there was a blern-hitting machine!
Brings to mind a scene in Michael Crichton's book Terminal Man where somebody is developing a ping pong playing robot (IIRC called HAPP (Hopelessly Articlated PingPong Player)) and the point is made that the ability to accurately deflect a table tennis ball could have all kinds of defense applications.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I, for one, welcome our new ping pong overlords!
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
That's why these robots have 120fps cameras.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"