Sink Your Balls Quickly With Pool-Cue Robots 79
AndreV writes "In another attempt to dehumanize our bar games, a Canadian engineer has turned the classic game of billiards on its head with his BilliardBots pet project, which consists of a series of remote-controlled mobile robots meant to replace the standard cue sticks normally used to pocket pool balls. While in his version the basic rules remain, unlike regular billiards, players in this version simultaneously rush to pocket their designated balls (they don't take turns), 'thus it's very competitive and fast,' the creator says. In order to keep tight reins on the mechatronic ball handlers' movements, he adapted a pair of Playstation controllers and says that playing 'requires dexterity, like a video game,' to control their 3.5-m/sec-maximum speeds. The 'bots are designed simply but effectively, using a 3-by-3-by-3-inch metal frame with an electronic board, two motors and rechargeable battery packs. Using a Bluetooth wireless communication protocol, its commands come from the wireless controller with single or double joystick selectable control (the other buttons are not used). Its other parameters are software programmable, such as maximum acceleration rate, maximum speed and maximum rotation speed."
Amusing, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I really don't see any value in this. Pool is a game of finesse, strategy, and ability, not brute forcing balls with robots. I don't know why you'd base it on a billiard/pool table and not something that was purpose built.
By using robots in this way you're removing what's fun about pool.
While his foosball table was cool, this is quite silly IMO.
Not a robot? (Score:2, Interesting)
My senior project for my BSEE was to make an actual robot that did this same thing. Each team's robot competed against each other to identify it's own balls and sink them before the other one could. Wish I had the video on youtube or something so you could all see the surprisingly boring competition.