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Robot Dominates Air Hockey, Adapts To Opponents' Playing Style

Posted by timothy on from the bet-on-the-robot-kid dept.

colinneagle writes "Researchers at Chiba University in Japan have developed a robot that could frustrate teenagers worldwide with its impressive air hockey skills. What's remarkable about this air hockey-playing robot, which is not the first of its kind, is that it can sense human opponents' playing styles and adapt to defend against them. The key is how the computer controlling the robot views its opponent — at a speed of 500 frames per second. From there, the robot uses a three-layer control system to determine motion control, when it should hit the puck, defend its goal or stay still, and a third that determines how it should react to its opponent's playing style."

12 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Robotic Pong by sidevans · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's only 41 years late...

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    1. Re:Robotic Pong by ranton · · Score: 2

      I know that people often underestimate how hard it is to program a good AI, but playing air hockey does not seem like a difficult AI problem. Once you are able to track the trajectory of the puck then you should never allow a goal as long as the reaction time is good enough. And with enough power you could hit the puck at the maximum speed that would not cause it to launch, and at angles where a human will have a harder time determining the target than the computer.

      Its a good project for college students to learn robotics and AI, but it doesn't really look like interesting research.

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  2. Robot vs Robot! by hedley · · Score: 3, Interesting

    3... 2... 1.. Fight!

    1. Re:Robot vs Robot! by c0lo · · Score: 4, Funny

      3... 2... 1.. Fight!

      (sound of crickets in the background: each of the robots waits the other's action to have something to react to).

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    2. Re:Robot vs Robot! by crakbone · · Score: 2

      The only winning move is not to play.

  3. Re:looks like it blocks if it would go to the hole by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Funny

    To loosely paraphrase: Any sufficiently advanced AI would be indistinguishable from cheating.

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  4. Ahh, the memories... by BananaBender · · Score: 2

    Shufflepuck Cafe, anybody?

    1. Re:Ahh, the memories... by Dan+East · · Score: 2

      Yes, thank you. Playing that game 20+ years ago taught me the futility of playing certain kinds of games against a computer. Eventually I could beat the hardest player (on occasion), but at that point it was very obvious that was only because the computer AI was purposefully imperfect. If I could hit a dozen or more perfect hits then eventually the computer would allow one to score.

      With this robot player the entire difficulty is overcoming whatever physical limitations exist in the hardware. It would have to account for lag and speed constraints in the mechanism it controls, but beyond that, I would fully expect it to be able to be nearly impossible for a human to score against it. I had enough trouble against a 7MHz Amiga in 1990, so I can only imagine what a modern quad core is capable of.

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    2. Re:Ahh, the memories... by NJRoadfan · · Score: 2

      24-bit color QuickDraw accelerated video cards were released for NuBus Macs. The lack of graphics acceleration likely wasn't a problem before that when you only had a 512x384 1-bit video "standard". The Amiga's custom chips couldn't handle 640x480x256 colors worth a damn, that mode on a stock AGA machine is slower then a crappy ISA SVGA card with no acceleration.

  5. Re:looks like it blocks if it would go to the hole by simonbp · · Score: 5, Funny

    The next challenge is a robot that drunkenly argues about the rules for three hours after just 10 minute of gameplay.

  6. Re:looks like it blocks if it would go to the hole by dubdays · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah, sounds like fun...a robot that whips my ass at air hockey every single time. What will they come up with next? A robot that chases me down with nunchucks and just beats the shit out of me? Woo hoo!

  7. Is nothing sacred anymore?!!! by Alejux · · Score: 2

    Next thing you know, robots will beat us at Foosball! We can't let this happen!