[Tyler]

Ping Pong Playing Robots
     

Robots capable of playing Ping Pong with humans have
been around for more than 20 years. In 1988 MIT published "A Robot Ping-Pong Player:
Experiments in Real-Time Intelligent Control (AI)" by Russell L. Andersson. Ping Pong is
interesting to roboticists because it requires understanding of dynamic
environments, accurate real-time vision, fast actuation, and
intelligence to play the game with a winning strategy. (Andersson went
on to write an IEEE paper on an
aggressive
trajectory generator for robot ping pong.) Andersson's machine,
built at Bell Labs, was
made from a bulky industrial robot arm combined with multiple video
cameras, used to reconstruct a 3D view of the playing space. Since then
things have improved quite a bit. Andersson's project was recreated
by Japanese researchers using a PC, two cameras, and a four axis
SCARA arm with good results. Mechatronics
students at the University of Adelaide also built a modern
version of Andersson's Ping Pong robot. The most impressive robot
ping pong player to date has to be Topio, a humanoid
robot from Tosy Robotics that was
able to beat many human players at the 2007
International Robotics Exhibition in Tokyo. See the YouTube video of Topio
in action. While they don't actually play ping pong, automated ball
throwers like the Newgy robots have become common
training devices for ping pong players.
   

http://robots.net/article/2560.html