Billiards is a fun sport because anyone can play it, even if they have had a couple of drinks. It’s entertaining and fun to play when you bet on your friends for a little extra cash and play money. But before you get too cocky, there may be a new kid on the block, and “it” could be a lot harder to beat than the friends you’ve been playing with at the local pool hall.
There was a great article on NewScientist TV, along with a video titled; “Born to Be Viral: Pool-Playing Robot Rivals Humans,” which appeared on June 9, 2011 and had articles all over the science news loop. The article says;
“Pool sharks, watch out – a new robot will make you run for your money. Definitely not the fastest player, but he completed 400 shots with an 80% success rate with two arms that can move in seven different ways. Cameras mounted above the table track the position of the balls and the cue, and send this information to the robot’s computers. Decide which is the best move, calculate the orientation and shoot. To get into position, roll around the table using coordinates default “
On the MIT Technology Review Blog Network on the MIMS Blog there was another article posted on June 11, 2011 titled; “How robots will beat humans at billiards”, by Christopher Mims, where he writes;
“Billiards makes chess and Jeopardy seem like child’s play – all the more reason to develop new technologies and further humiliate the human race by tackling this unique computational challenge.”
Watching this robotic system play, he seems to have very little trouble making direct shots. His accuracy isn’t 100% making bench shots off the wall, but he’s close and better than me. He may not be better than a professional player, but he can surely compete against anyone in any of the pool halls I have been to. This new device could work quite well for billiard room owners, allowing humans to challenge it and perhaps win a prize if they can beat it. Right now he has his own software, and he doesn’t have artificial intelligence, so he doesn’t improve the more he plays, he always plays at the same level.
However, I hope that in the future artificial intelligence will be added to this unit, and that it will be extremely difficult to beat to improve after every mistake or victory, perfecting its maximum precision. The fact that you can do these calculations so easily and repeat them, as if it were nothing more than a simple task, is a bit disconcerting for anyone who has tried to master the game. However, this is the future that we will see in the future.
In fact, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more billiard robots in science fiction movies. This robot looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, but it’s current technology, it exists, and it’s pretty cool. It is real, this is a misleading photograph, or some ambitious project to make a viral video. In fact, I hope you go to YouTube, look it up, and see what you think. It seems like something that would be great to practice with and improve your billiards skills. Consider all of this and think about it.