I, Foos: Robotic Foosball Device Enables Solo Play

thehomeland writes "NewScientist.com reports of a new device produced by Bernhard Nebel at the University of Freiburg in Germany that allows one to play foosball solo -- with a robotic opponent. May be available next year for 20,000 Euros." What about ping-pong?

For that price, couldn't you buy a friend?

[Ahnteis]

It sounds like a fun toy and all, but if you're that desperate for a partner, pay some teenager a couple of bucks an hour. :P

On the other hand, if you've got money to burn, I suppose why not?

That can't work!

[NashCarey]

So much in this game has to do with the strange ball physics. Like putting the right spins while trying to blast the ball past the defender. I cannot immagine this technology to be so advanced to do things that real competitive players will find remotely challenging. Not to mention after programming the computer to possibly track the ball and what not, then to try to program artificial intelligence to make sure you aren't exploiting same weaknesses over and over.

I am wondering if they will somehow design a way to play pool againsht a computer.

Re:That can't work!

[bhima]

Been done... and it's been on /.

Re:That can't work!

[OneDeeTenTee]

There already was a pool playing robot on Slashdot.

Re:That can't work!

[vadim_t]

Eh, it's physics. The math shouldn't be that hard for a modern CPU.

I think the challenge would be more in making hardware that could react quickly enough and could apply the right amount of force. Tracking the ball sounds fairly simple, just do it like a tablet tracks a pen's position. You probably could even do it with a strong magnet in the ball, and coils of wire under the board.

Re:That can't work!

[drinkypoo]

A strong magnet in the ball might cause problems with attraction to the bars. I suggest tracking it optically, from above and from both sides, with cameras. The ball is sufficiently different from its surroundings to be pretty easy to track, especially if you used a differently-colored ball.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:That can't work!

[BIGmog]

There's already a pool playing robot named Deep Green [engadget.com].

Well, we had to do something after we cured cancer

[mabu]

Now that all other scientific horizons have been crossed, we're tackling the age-old problem of solo foosball.

Re:Heh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Play with your own (foot)balls?

What about ping-pong?

[Lars T.]

That robot is called "a wall".

Re:What about ping-pong?

[ArmorFiend]

There once was a Robotics program that did make a ping-pong robot. It was good. Real good. Had a robot arm, swatted the ping pong ball like it was Forrest Gump.

I think this was CMU.

Anyway, they were going to demo this to the board of trustees. They'd tested it lots, but since it was an important demo they set it up and gave a test run before the trustees came in. It performed perfectly.

The demo began. On the first serve the robot froze and locked up. The trustees and researchers gathered in around it to try to analyze the problem. The robot un-froze and smacked a trustee in the forehead.

What was going on? They'd written the robot's AI in a garbage collected language. In all their relatively short test runs they'd never triggered the GC. By running the pre-demo test, then leaving the machine warm, they'd used up all their heap, and on the first ball it'd decided to GC. This was old hardware and took several minutes (during which time people gathered in around it). When it came out of GC, it had finally computed where to swing the paddle to hit that (long dead) ball. Unfortunately that was the exact same region of space as the trustees head. SMAK!

Re:Foosball is irrelevant...

[drinkypoo]

So sick of it that you felt a need to bring it into this story? Has anyone ever told you that you've got issues?

Foosball ..

[evslin]

Last time I played foosball was against these German kids when I lived in Germany. Those kids were mean, they beat my brother and me by almost a dozen points before we conceded victory.

yeah right...

[UltimaL337Star]

Turn your back on it for one second and it'll pop ya in the crotch while spreading the word to kill humans to all of your other appliances

Great!

[tjlsmith]

Now my Foozball game can match my sex life!

What they need to do...

[f8free]

is get together with the http://www.robocup.org/ [robocup.org] people and some miniaturization experts, and come up with a total RoboFoosball table.
Forget spinning those sticks, you could coach the little guys! Against the inhuman RoboCoach!