The Japanese techno wizards are always at it. They never sleep. They busy themselves with world domination and gadgetry day in, day out.
Their robot du jour is a snazzy bit of kit that can beat any human, every single time, without fail at rock paper scissors. Until the cows come home. All the live long day. You just can’t beat it. Don’t even bother thinking about trying. IT IS THE WINNER before you’ve even curled your sausage fingers into a fist it knows what you’re going to do.
Well, that last bit wasn’t true. It’s not a mind reader, it’s just got a super fast movement detector that lets it know what you’re going to do with your ham fist, then chooses the winning cyber finger contortion in a tres rapide fashion.
The robot is called the Janken robot and was designed at the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. It’s all fun and games but there are, of course, some pretty serious uses for a robot like this…. well… not the robot itself, but the technology used to develop it. I mean, you couldn’t send it in to negotiate with terrorists in the hope that a rock paper scissors game would tip them over the edge into surrendering.
It’s more the quick reaction times that they’re interested in. when it comes to things like high speed accidents, stock market fluctuations etc, chips that can respond so lightningly fast will be pretty beneficial. Technology is all about smaller and faster at the moment. Which is a shame because I’m getting bigger and slower….
Here it is in action. Jealous?:
