Rocky the Unstoppable: NASA Engineer Creates a Nearly Unbeatable Rock-Paper-Scissors Robot
A former NASA engineer has built a rock-paper-scissors robot that is nearly unbeatable, and he’s offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who can defeat it.
Mark Rober, arenowned technology blogger and founder of CrunchLabs, has created Rocky, a robot that utilizes advanced tracking technology to predict and counter human moves in the classic game.Rocky’s secret lies in its ability to analyze hand gestures at a rate of 100 frames per second. This rapid-fire detection, coupled with a built-in microcomputer, allows Rocky to identify a player’s move and reactwith the optimal counter-move before the player even completes their gesture.
Rocky not only tracks my hand position and moves up and down with me, Rober explains, but it also analyzes my finger position in real-time to determine what I’m throwing.
Rober’s confidence in Rocky’s prowess is evident in his $10,000 challenge to the world. He invites anyone to step up and try to beat his creation. While acknowledging the difficulty of the task, Rober offers a strategy to increase a player’s chances ofvictory. He suggests players follow a pattern of rock, paper, scissors, as this strategy achieved a 75% win rate in approximately 54,000 trials. This strategy is based on the observation that humans tend to repeat their previous move after a win, and switch their move after a loss.
However, even with this strategy, Rober admits that defeating Rocky remains a formidable challenge. He believes that the odds of winning against Rocky, regardless of the strategy employed, are extremely low, bordering on zero.
This isn’t the first time humans have attempted to create an unbeatable rock-paper-scissors robot.Twelve years ago, the Ishikawa Group Laboratory in Japan developed a similar robot named Janken, which also utilized high-speed tracking technology to achieve a perfect win rate.
Rocky’s creation highlights the advancements in artificial intelligence and robotics, demonstrating the potential for machines to outperform humans in even seemingly simple tasks. It alsoraises intriguing questions about the future of human-machine interactions and the limits of human ingenuity in the face of ever-evolving technology.
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