DailyDirt: Air Hockey Robots
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
There is a decreasing number of games that humans can play against computers and still win. Most of us would lose at chess. If Ken Jennings can't win Jeopardy! against a computer, the rest of us likely have limited chances. People probably shouldn't play poker with real money against AI. But we can still have some fun playing, right? Robots can't beat us at games like tennis and soccer (yet), but they're getting pretty good at air hockey, so we better watch out....- Japanese researchers have created a formidable air hockey robot that can adjust its strategy after observing its human opponents. By creating a bot that adapts to its opponents, it makes the game more entertaining for humans. [url]
- In 2008, Nuvation built an air hockey robot in less than 10 weeks. The bot is only good at defense (really really good), so it doesn't try to win as much as it just never loses (and humans give up). [url]
- The Air Hockeybot 1000 at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh is a permanent robotics exhibition featuring the Nuvation robot. Anyone can play against this bot, but it's hard to beat a 32-bit computer (the 8-bit version is an easier opponent). [url]
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: ai, air hockey, air hockeybot 1000, algorithm, artificial intelligence, game algorithms, games, robots
Companies: freescale, nuvation
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Come with me if you want to live
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Come with me if you want to live
How about a nice game of chess?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Come with me if you want to live
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Robot
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Nuvation's Air Hockey Robot
The initial algorithm didn't do a very good job of calculating the effect of the spin of the puck. Men hit the puck harder, and when the puck is traveling really quickly the effect of the spin is negligible. When you slow the puck down just a bit, the spin changes the direction a lot more, and the robot had trouble compensating!
Read a recap of the design story on Nuvation's blog
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The Last Word
“Nuvation's Air Hockey Robot
Interesting fact about Nuvation's air hockey bot: when they first debuted the bot at the Freescale technology forum, everyone observed that women were much better at beating it than men were. Why?The initial algorithm didn't do a very good job of calculating the effect of the spin of the puck. Men hit the puck harder, and when the puck is traveling really quickly the effect of the spin is negligible. When you slow the puck down just a bit, the spin changes the direction a lot more, and the robot had trouble compensating!
Read a recap of the design story on Nuvation's blog