Can You Beat the Robot?

My 15 year old daughter loves beating me at backgammon.  When she looses, she forces me to play 3 out of 5 and then 5 out of 7, until there is no end.  Her competitive spirit is reminiscent of Gary Kasparov’s loss to IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997.  You may recall that Kasparov demanded a rematch, accusing the computer of cheating, but IBM dismantled his chess-playing opponent before an eventual battle between man vs. machine.

Earlier this week, researchers at the Ishikawa Oku Lab of the University of Tokyo proved once and for all that the robot wins 100% of the time, at least at “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” Kasparov was right, the robot cheats 100% of the time. Oku Lab’s “Human-Machine Cooperation System” [catching name?] uses a a high-speed camera to recognize the shape of  its opponent’s hand within a millisecond before it is laid down. The purpose of this cute device is to illustrate the potential “cooperation work between human beings and robots etc. without time delay.”

Once could brainstorm until the sunsets, how the Tokyo HMCS could be literally be a game changer for robotics and humans, even off the playing field.