Timo Boll Takes On Robot!

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NOW HERE - Timo Boll takes on the Kuka Robot!


Timo Boll has just posted these pics on his Facebook page saying he had fun with his training partner :)

We have to wait till March until we find out who wins. This robot 'KUKA KR AGILUS' is the worlds fastest robot created by KUKa Robotics. Stay tuned in March!


timo1.jpg

timo2.jpg

timo 3.jpg
 
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Are those for real? They look ominous.

I believe they are real as Timo Boll posted them himself. I agree with @ttmonster I think it's for some sort of advertisement perhaps. I think soon we will see robots like this in the near future :)
 
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Hi guys,

i never posted something here before, but when i saw this i just like to give some information.

The quality of production of the pictures are so good , I fear it might be part of some advertisement campaign !! However,, they do look really spectacular !

I just took a look on the company website and found this.

kuka-robotics.com/en/pressevents/news/NN_140124_German_Ace_for_Asia.htm (Thats my first post, so i cant put the complete link here)

So it seems you are right.

I work with this kind of robots every day and i really believe that it is possible to set it up to play table tennis.
I like to see a video of this, but i can't find anything :(

Sad to say, that there wont be a chance to afford such a training partner since it starts around 35.000$. :D
 
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That robots can't "see" the ball. So they can't play Table Tennis. They just can play one shot every time because the return of their shot can be in every place and robot can't see the ball. So the robot can't return it.

First: if they serve first they don't need to return, because they can serve with such precision that there is no chance to return that ball.
Second: you can attach video and another cams to give him "eyes" :)
 
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First: if they serve first they don't need to return, because they can serve with such precision that there is no chance to return that ball.
Second: you can attach video and another cams to give him "eyes" :)
First: Even if the robot can serve with the quality of world top 10 players (that i think it can'ts), Timo can return it like what he is doing against top 10 players in the world.
Second: The cameras just take the picture of the ball. They can not tell the robot what to do. It needs very powerful cameras and processors to find the speed, spin and the placement of the ball and then tell the robot what to do in a very short time (Timo will return the balls in less than half of a second).
 
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First: Even if the robot can serve with the quality of world top 10 players (that i think it can'ts), Timo can return it like what he is doing against top 10 players in the world.
Second: The cameras just take the picture of the ball. They can not tell the robot what to do. It needs very powerful cameras and processors to find the speed, spin and the placement of the ball and then tell the robot what to do in a very short time (Timo will return the balls in less than half of a second).

I see you are not familiar with latest technologies. Do you honestly think nowadays robots can't serve as Top 10 players?? You can make them to serve many times better than top players nearly 100 % precision everytime. Ofcoure such robots don't costs $2000 ...
 
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Well, the robot does have sensors that tell it what spin and how much is on the ball and it can judge where the ball is going. The sensors, the computer, the programming and the movement of the arm are amazing technologies. But, the base does not move and so there are places where you can put the ball that the robot might not be able to reach and places where the robot's sensors might lose the ball, like if you gave a really high lob, or very short and low at a high angle. I don't think it can beat a human a player who is in the top 10 in the world, but it can rally with a player and put the ball back several times. If it could not do that, it would not be able to serve. To serve, it would have to have the ball set on the racket, project the ball up, and hit it while it was coming down. It would not be able to do that if it could not "see" and return balls. How strange to have a machine that can read spin.
 
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says bebakhshid.
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I see you are not familiar with latest technologies. Do you honestly think nowadays robots can't serve as Top 10 players?? You can make them to serve many times better than top players nearly 100 % precision everytime. Ofcoure such robots don't costs $2000 ...
So you think the robot is going to win? lets see if it can. Timo is going to destroy it.
 
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To serve, it would have to have the ball set on the racket, project the ball up, and hit it while it was coming down. It would not be able to do that if it could not "see" and return balls. How strange to have a machine that can read spin.
It can do it without seeing the ball. It just do some movements after the last ones. You can program it first to go up then down and after that forward. If you put a ball on that and run the program then it would serve the ball without seeing it.
 
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Perhaps, it's only an ad, and it won't be a real match, juste few ball exchanges ...
 
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I'm pretty sure that it can't play even at the level of a 2000 USA rating player. If it can, it would be pretty amazing to me.

Well, I don't really have any idea what it can do. But, it will be fun to see what it can do. If it can return several balls from Timo Boll when he is not trying to hit it where the robot can't get it, that is still pretty impressive in my opinion. In fact, just the fact that it could do what they showed it do with the ball in the video is pretty impressive.
 
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