[cdg] Computer News - Robots invade the table football pitch
- From: "Donny Duncan" <ravers_deelite@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <cdg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 18:43:15 -0500
Pulled from NewScientist (www.newscientist.com)
Robots invade the table football pitch
Fans of table football, or foosball, will no longer have to hang around at the
pub waiting for a friend to turn up before they can play. A robotic foosball
table will be able to give them just as good a game.
Foosball is a table-based game in which players twist, push and pull rotating
metal rods attached to figures representing soccer players. The idea is to use
the model players to kick a ball into the opponent's goal.
To turn it into a single-player game, roboticists led by Bernhard Nebel at the
University of Freiburg in Germany have connected the rods on one side of a
foosball table to high-torque motors and an electronic control system. They are
claiming some pretty good results against casual players. "It beat 85% of a
random sample," Nebel says.
To allow the control system to track the ball, the base of the table is made of
translucent glass, tinted green. A camera underneath photographs the ball 50
times per second, and sends this data to a built-in computer that maps the
ball's position.
Read the entire article here:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996346
Donny Duncan
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