Robot v. human, table tennis edition

"You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much" (youcantellafinn) 03/13/2014 at 07:17 • Filed to: OTBA, ROBOTS

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Entertaining advertisement for Kuka Robotics. They pit their robot arm against Timo Boll, professional table tennis player. Not sure if he is currently the world #1, but at least he has been at some point in his career.

Article on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

Mattbob > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 03/13/2014 at 07:25

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I call bullshit. Where are the sensors for the robot to detect the ball? Thats what is really impressive, is the control system to adapt to a random input like a ping pong ball position and hit it accordingly.

The Dummy Gummy > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 03/13/2014 at 07:40

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The angles on this video are the worst. But I agree definitely scripted/fake

Clown Shoe Pilot > Mattbob 03/13/2014 at 07:41

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There was probably an array of cameras above and to the sides, out of shot. Also not shown in the video - electrical generation and distribution equipment to run the arm, motor controllers, image processing computers

Mattbob > Clown Shoe Pilot 03/13/2014 at 08:13

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electrical generation? Come on guy. Calm down. None of that other stuff needs to be close to the machine. If it is legit, and there is sensing out of shot, then it is a pretty impressive system, more impressive than the arm itself in my opinion.

Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 03/13/2014 at 09:12

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I would sure like to see raw footage, or footage as if they were shooting a tournament. Not an action movie.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > Mattbob 03/13/2014 at 09:30

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I will agree with CSP on this. The likely place to have cameras is overhead and/or off to the sides. You don't want the cameras mounted on the arm because that will make object tracking much more difficult since now you need to keep moving the cameras relative to the arm. You also wouldn't want the cameras mounted behind the arm because the arm would block the view of the ball and it would be more difficult for the vision system to figure out the motion of the ball when it is coming towards the camera as opposed to going across the cameras field of view. You could probably manage it with two overhead cameras, but would most likely have more than two cameras.

What impresses me isn't the object tracking, but the spin tracking. Having played a bit of ping pong back in the day, if you don't play the spin correctly the return tends to be quite erratic. As far as I could tell the only marking on the ball was the name printed in one location, though they could have IR or UV markings that the cameras were picking up. Or possibly they had the arm programmed to return a single direction of spin and just had the player use that spin for all the shots that got returned by the robot.

The point CSP was making with the electrical generation comment is that just because something is out of shot in an advertising video doesn't mean it isn't there.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > The Dummy Gummy 03/13/2014 at 09:31

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It is an advertisement, being scripted is a given.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs 03/13/2014 at 09:32

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You get an internet if you can find a behind the scenes video of this. I'm too lazy to try and dig it up right now.

The Dummy Gummy > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 03/13/2014 at 09:33

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Did you change the post because the one I read something along the lines, this has got to be fake right? And nothing about an advertisement. Hence the scripted/fake comment. I think I got kinja'd

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > The Dummy Gummy 03/13/2014 at 09:36

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No, didn't do any ninja edits. What I'm seeing now is what I remember writing.

The Dummy Gummy > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 03/13/2014 at 09:38

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Ha man I have no clue what I read. Sorry. An advertisement would definitely be scripted. I swear I'm not a lunatic...

Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 03/13/2014 at 09:53

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Haha, yeah. I think my company actually does business with Kuka.