Robot Athletes Got Game [Video] (original) (raw)

November 27, 2014

3 min read

From baseball to billiards, robots are improving their play, even competing in the RoboCup and RoboGames

Between bouts of eating this Thanksgiving weekend you might want to head outside and toss a football, shoot some hoops or kick a soccer ball around to get a little exercise. If the weather’s nasty (or if you live in Buffalo) perhaps Ping Pong or a game of pool will do.

Can’t get any people in your house off the couch? Ask a robot.

Of course “a robot that plays soccer” could mean anything from a little cube 15 centimeters high that pushes a tiny ball on a tabletop field, to supersize automatons. For holiday fun I’ve collected videos of humanoids as well as nonhuman-like contraptions that play a real game on a real surface—with a little latitude for “real.” Each video (below) follows a caption explaining it.

I’ve checked these out because simply searching the Web can be deceiving. For example, in March a video went viral that showed an industrial-like robot arm pushing a professional table tennis player to the limit in a fast-action series of incredibly skilled shots; it turned out to be a doctored marketing stunt for the KUKA Robot Group.

If you’re more interested in humanoid robots competing in Olympic-style events such as weightlifting and kung fu, check out the RoboGames. And if you know of other worthy robot athletes, post a note and link in the Comments section below. Let’s see how many we can find!

BASEBALL: It is sometimes said that the hardest task to master in sports is hitting a baseball. Researchers at Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory in Japan have devised one robot that pitches and another that bats. Neither chews tobacco.

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PING-PONG, humanoid: Table tennis seems to attract robotics researchers. Here, two humanoid robots developed at Zhejiang University in China hold a long volley with one another.
PING-PONG, nonhumanoid: This contraption from Omron Automation Lab plays pretty well. As is often the case, if a bot does not have to look or move like a human, it can often perform better.
SOCCER: “Football,” or fútbol, is the planet’s most popular sport. Just like the World Cup there is a RoboCup for robotic soccer teams, complete with different classes by size of robot. The video below shows a match between the U.S. and Japan, with two-robot teams, in the “kid-size” category.
AIR HOCKEY: Huh? Air hockey isn’t a sport. Well, when you see this little, round tabletop bot, you’ll be impressed. Equally impressive is that its maker, Jose Julio of 3D Systems, created it with parts from a 3-D printer.
BILLIARDS: I know, it’s “pool,” and not necessarily viewed by some as a sport—but how many random balls on a table can you sink in a row? This robot built by Thomas Nierhoff at Technical University of Munich in Germany pockets five!
BADMINTON: Don’t think this sport is difficult? Try it. The robot from the Flanders Mechatronics Technology Center in Belgium can only move on a single track, back and forth across the court. A birdie—or shuttlecock—however, flies in varied trajectories, so just tracking and swatting it is an accomplishment.
BASKETBALL: Okay, this robot at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh is just a big arm that shoots free throws, but it seems to do that well.