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Baseball Robot Pitching Batting Battle VIDEO
Baseball-playing robots are able to throw pitches and get hits with great accuracy. created by University of Tokyo professor Masatoshi Ishikawa.
(Baseball robot pitcher)
The three-fingered pitching robot shown in the picture above is able to throw 90 percent of its pitches into the strike zone.
'The demand level of the robotics technology of each robot is very high,' Ishikawa said. 'What was difficult was to create a mechanism to satisfy such a high level of demand.'
The batting robot has a sensor to determine whether a pitch is a strike or a ball, and can hit balls in the strike zone almost 100 percent of the time.
'The demand level of the robotics technology of each robot is very high,' Ishikawa said. 'What was difficult was to create a mechanism to satisfy such a high level of demand.'
Take a look at this video of an eternal struggle - near-perfect robot pitcher versus near-perfect robot batter. The two robots are just 3.5 meters apart; yet the pitcher's 25 mph throw does not challenge the batter, whose 1000-frame-per-second camera slows the robot's perception of the ball to a near-standstill. Legendary human batter Ted Williams could see the ball in contact with the bat; this robot batter could probably do even better.
(Eternal robot battle - near-perfect pitcher versus near-perfect batter)
See also this related robotic baseball story - Robotic Catcher Does Not Need Mitt. Robot sports fans will enjoy this baseball batting robot video; this robot was created several years ago by Frank Barnes of Robocross.
Via The Canadian Press; thanks to Martin for the tip on this story.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 7/25/2009)
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