Mig 
Greengard's ChessNinja.com

And Then They Came for the Air Hockey Players

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Wait, what? Yes, in the next step on the long path to Arnold Schwarzenegger's naked self coming back in time to save us, a machine has mastered air hockey. Somehow I doubt this is going to cause a similar crisis of doomsaying, but it is pretty cool. This article has no info on how it's done. I.e. is hooked up to a special board or is it entirely optical? The jerky video clip they have there is worse than what most 13-year-old girls are producing of their slumber parties with cell phones. So I hear. This vid of early testing is at least clear.

6 Comments

Surely no mystery - the hawkeye-type cameras predict the flightpath of the puck and the robot intercepts. Quite what is the best way for the robot to attack, as opposed to defend, is less clear.
g


Looks to me (I am an AI person) like it's not just a one-off. I would guess some fairly general methods for extrapolating the likely trajectory of the puck based on uncertain information from the camera - there has been a huge amount of work done on this kind of problem in all sorts of areas. Think e.g. automatic drivers for cars and guided missiles. Then it sounds like they have programmed in some strategy (how to position the "hand", when to play for attack as opposed to defense), with a learning component. Reasonably sophisticated mainstream stuff.


There's a much better video, with some explanation, at http://www.brucehartman.net/2008/06/23/nuvation-air-hockey-robot/


There's a much better video, with some explanation, at http://www.brucehartman.net/2008/06/23/nuvation-air-hockey-robot/

Hi Mig,

This is totally unrelated, but in Kasparov's 1999 game against Topalov, can't Topalov, after 31.Qxf6, immediately play 31..Rd1+ 32.Kb2 Qd4+ forcing the exchange of queens and winning (or at least drawing) the game for Topalov? How does that not work?

Would you mind asking him?

Thanks!

Bozo

No need to ask Garry. After the queen trade, White simply plays Rxf7. Then White has two pawns for the exchange, so is at least even in material. But, far more important, Black will find it very difficult - probably impossible - to stop the maneuver Bh3-e6-b3#. (If Black tries an immediate ...a5, then Ra7 followed by Rxa5#.)

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    This page contains a single entry by Mig published on July 9, 2008 10:42 PM.

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