This robot always wins at rock-paper-scissors

Don't bother playing rock, paper and scissors with this robot hand, human.

 

Researchers at the Ishikawa Oku laboratory at the University of Tokyo developed a Janken (rock-paper-scissors) robot hand that they claim will always win against a human.

 

The secret? It "cheats" —by scanning the movements of the human opponent's hand at high speed, and then predicting if it will form a rock, paper, or scissors.

 

"Recognition of the human hand can be performed at 1 (millisecond) with a high-speed vision, and the position and the shape of the human hand are recognized. The wrist joint angle of the robot hand is controlled based on the position of the human hand," it said.

 

Once it recognizes what the human opponent is about to form, the robot hand acts appropriately - rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, and paper beats rock.

 

But the researchers said a more serious application of the technology can go to "cooperation work between human beings and robots ... without time delay."

 

An article on IEEE.org theorized even attempts to fool the robot by changing one's mind halfway through may not work, as the high-speed scanning can see the changes.

 

"You might be thinking that you could fool the system by changing your mind halfway through, but my guess is that the hand and vision system are faster than your reflexes could ever be, and that it would be trivial for the robot to adapt to any creative moves that happens on the human end," it said. — TJD, GMA News