Skip to main content

Just for kicks: this robot will absolutely destroy you in a game of foosball

All brawn, little brains: EPFL students’ table-football robot
Whether it’s chess, Go, or TV’s
Recommended Videos
Jeopardy!, it seems that computers (and their programmers) aren’t willing to stop in their ongoing quest to beat human players at every possible game out there. The latest? A robot developed at the Swiss École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), which is capable of competing against — and beating — humans at foosball.

Created as a research project for students in the university’s Automatic Control Laboratory, the robot can outclass many human players by using powerful “arms” boasting the same kind of high dynamic linear motors found in manufacturing. It also possesses incredibly keen eyesight, thanks to a high-speed camera located underneath the table’s transparent floor. This camera takes 300 images every second, which are then analyzed by a computer tracking the ball’s movement.

“It’s able to measure the [ball’s] position much faster than a human,” Christophe Salzmann, the scientist in charge of the project, told Digital Trends. “Our specification for the project was to be both faster and stronger than a person. We actually had to reduce some of the power in the [machine’s] rotational motors because they were kicking the ball so hard that it left the play area.”

So just how good is the foosball robot? “At the moment, it can beat beginners or average players who don’t have much of a strategy for playing,” Salzmann continued. “I’ve played quite a few times before, but I certainly wouldn’t call myself an experienced player — and the computer can beat me. We haven’t yet tried it with really strong human players, but at the moment I think a pro or semi-pro player would be able to beat it.”

Part of the reason for this, he explained, is that the robot doesn’t possess much of a strategy. It can’t, for instance, try and fake out opponents, block incoming attacks, or even pass the ball between players. Instead it simply detects where the ball is and then blasts it toward the goal: a technique which works surprisingly well, when combined with its speed and strength.

But improvements are continuing to be made. “We want to add strategy,” Salzmann said. “There are lots of things we could do. Right now, we’re measuring where opponents are positioned, but not acting on this information. We’ve been watching a lot of videos of pro players to see how they play, and we really want to add some of those tricks.”

It won’t be today or tomorrow, but in a few years maybe we’ll be reading about championship-level robot foosball players. Hey, Skynet has to unwind after a busy day somehow, right?

Luke Dormehl
Former Digital Trends Contributor
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
AI-controlled robots can be jailbroken, and the results could be disastrous
The Figure 02 robot looking at its own hand

Researchers at Penn Engineering have reportedly uncovered previously unidentified security vulnerabilities in a number of AI-governed robotic platforms.

"Our work shows that, at this moment, large language models are just not safe enough when integrated with the physical world," George Pappas, UPS Foundation Professor of Transportation in Electrical and Systems Engineering, said in a statement.

Read more
Boston Dynamics gave its Atlas robot an AI brain
The electric atlas from boston dynamics

Boston Dynamics and Toyota Research Institute (TRI) announced on Tuesday that they are partnering to develop general-purpose humanoid robots. Boston Dynamics will contribute its new electric Atlas robot to the task, while TRI will utilize its industry-leading Large Behavior Models.

Boston Dynamics, which launched in 1992 as an offshoot from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has been at the forefront of robotics development for more than 30 years. It burst into the mainstream in 2009 with the BigDog and LittleDog quadrupedal systems and debuted the first iteration of its bipedal Atlas platform in 2013. Atlas' capabilities have undergone a steady evolution in the past decade, enabling the robot to perform increasingly difficult acrobatics and dexterity tasks, from dancing and doing back flips to to conquering parkour courses and navigating simulated construction sites.

Read more
After years of promises, Xbox might let you stream games you own
An Xbox controller being held up in front of an Xbox Series S

Xbox may soon be testing the ability to let you stream games you own over Cloud Streaming, instead of limiting you to just titles available in Xbox Game Pass.

The Verge's Tom Warren reports that the functionality is a part of Project Lapland, and will be coming to the Xbox Insider program in November. Barring any problems, it'll release to more users after that. Based on previous statements, it'll likely only be available to Ultimate subscribers.

Read more