A robot takes on humans in air hockey.
First, a supercomputer beats a chess master. Then, an artificial intelligence program deals defeat to a poker champion. Next: A robot takes on humans in air hockey.
An upgraded robot designed by General Electric Fanuc (GEF) and programmed by Nuvation Research Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) can beat most human air hockey players, its developers claim.
The robot is powered by a special pc-board that can instantly switch between Freescale Semiconductor’s 8-bit Flexis and its 32-bit ColdFire microcontrollers running identical C language programs. The 8-bit version lost to most human players, but the 32-bit microcontroller defeated even the best human air hockey players by a ratio of three to one.
“Good air hockey players can score against the robot if they try really really hard. But its pretty obvious that the human is the underdog–for one thing, the audience cheers whenever the human makes a goal,” quipped Michael Worry, president and CEO of Nuvation.
Early Testing day.
