Baseball pitching and batting robots
Pink Tentacle posted this video of a robotic baseball pitcher and batter.
The robot pitcher consists of a high-speed, three-fingered hand (developed by professor Masatoshi Ishikawa and his team from the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology) mounted on a mechanical arm (developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). With superb control of nimble fingers that can open and close at a rate of up to 10 times per second, the robot can release the ball with perfect timing. Precise coordination between the fingers, hand and arm allow the robot pitcher to hit the strike zone 90% of the time.Video: Robot baseball
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Only 90% of the time? That seems pretty low for a robot.
That batter's juiced, I know it. 220v, I'd bet.
There are dozens of robot designs that have beaten this to market. They are called pitching machines and you can see one in person at a kiddie fun park near you! This demo would be slightly more impressive if the wrist motion and finger pressure could be varied to let the thing throw pitches with some movement and the batting machine could read the pitches and hit them.
why are they wasting time with baseball? Half the human race is waiting for tireless, dexterous digits. Sheesh.
Can the Brewers sign one for the playoff stretch? >.>
But does it have movement on its fastball? Can it throw a 3-2 backdoor cutter to get a strike out and get out of a bases loaded jam? Can it shake off signs from the robot catcher and adjust it's crotch while it looks the runner back to 1st?
I for one welcome our new Major League Robo-Baseball overlords.
/robo-baseball is fun to say
"What have I told you droids about playing ball indoors!??"
I, for one, look forward to the day when all baseball teams are completely populated by algorithmically-perfect robots and games are decided by local atmospheric conditions.
The pitcher? Nothing but a modified Howitzer. The batter? Just a programmable bat on wheels.
They'll NEVER be as good as Clem Johnson, who will have played back in the days before steroid injections were mandatory!
I'll be impressed when they teach the pitcher to also catch the returned ball, possibly seamlessly whirling around and (precisely) hurling the ball back to the batter. Rinse, repeat until the ball falls apart. Then give it a couple more throws, just for kicks.
But wait. I thought Japan had already developed the perfect baseball robot . . . Ichiro Suzuki.
We're only a few short years way from the Robot Baseball League, Wireless Joe Jackson, and Blernsball. I can't wait.
@#13: Sadly, we already know how many robot managers there will be: ZERO.
Still, the chance to see jazzed-up baseball would be awesome. "Multi-Ball! Multi-Ball!#!$"
That's pretty nice, but a steady diet of fastballs down the middle of the plate isn't going to fool professional batters for very long. Did you see the kind of stuff Mark Buehrle was throwing in his perfect game? He wasn't exactly blowing people away with his 86-mph fastball, it was his control over the location and his pitch selection, using lots of change-ups and curves.