Air Hockey Bot Neutralizes Last Bastion Of Humanity
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Tuesday, 15 of July , 2008 at 2:56 am
Alas. It was only a matter of time before the final bastion of human superiority, the air hockey table, fell to the relentless progress of rec room robotics. The culprit is Nuvation Research Corporation, who programmed their FANUC robotic arm to defeat pretty much all comers at the air hockey table. Well, not so much defeat, as (at first glance) it doesn’t appear to have any offensive capabilities… Or else it’s just biding its time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Robots are patient and crafty like that, you know. Have a look:
See? I told you. Patient and crafty. Apparently, the robot ended up scoring three times as many goals as its human opponents, and defeated absolutely everyone. It has now been challenged to participate in a professional air hockey tournament (such things exist).
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen FANUC hardware; we wrote about them earlier this year as a pair of their arms were declared as the 2007 Robot Of The Year by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. While in some respects air hockey doesn’t seem like the most challenging of applications for a robotic vision system and arm (especially considering some of the other feats we’ve seen them perform), consider how fast the puck moves when you fire it at the robot as hard as you can. And if you watch the video in its entirety, you’ll even see it slip a goal in at the very end.
First ping pong, now air hockey. Yep, we’re doomed.
Comments (1)
Category: Competitive, Industrial
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Comment by Fanuc
Made Thursday, 14 of August , 2008 at 9:14 am
This is the third or forth video of this i have seen. I think i could beat this ‘unbeatable’ air hockey machine. I play a mean game of air hockey and am more than familiar with FANUC robotics. In fact i KNOW i could win…..