Billiards is a fun sport because anyone can play it, even if you have a few drinks. It is a fun and interesting game to play when you bet your friends for a little extra and play money. But before you get too cocky, there might be a new kid on the block who might be a lot more difficult to get over than the friends you used to play with at the local pool hall.
There was a great article on NewScientist TV, along with a video titled; “Born to Go Viral: A Billiards Robot Rivals Humans,” appeared on June 9, 2011 and there were articles all over the science news circuit. Article states;
“Sharks beware: the new robot will give you a run for your money. It’s certainly not the fastest player but it has completed 400 shots with an 80 percent success rate with two arms that can move seven different ways. Above-the-table cameras track the position of the balls and cue, and feed that information into the robot’s computers. It decides the best move, calculates the coordinates, and shoots them.”
On the MIT Technology Review blog web on the MIMS blog, another write-up was posted on June 11, 2011 titled; “How Robots Will Beat Humans at Pool” by Christopher Mims where he writes;
“Pool makes Chess and Jeopardy seem like a children’s game – all the more reason to develop new technologies – and further humiliate mankind – by meeting this unique computational challenge.”
Watching the operation of this automated system, it appears to have very little trouble making direct shots. Its accuracy isn’t 100% bank shots of the wall, but it’s close, and better than me. Maybe not better than a professional player, but he can certainly compete against anyone in any of the pool halls I’ve ever been to. This new device may work well for pool hall owners because it allows humans to challenge it, and possibly win a prize if they can beat it. At the moment he has his own software, no AI, so he doesn’t get better whenever he plays, he always plays at the same level.
However, I expect in the future to add artificial intelligence to this unit, and it will be very difficult to beat the improvement after each mistake or win, focusing on its absolute accuracy. The fact that they can easily perform these calculations, and repeat them, as if it were nothing more than a simple task, is a little annoying to anyone who has tried to master the game. However, this is the future we will see in the future.
I’m really surprised we haven’t seen more pool bots appear in sci-fi movies. This robot looked like something out of a science fiction movie, but it’s current technology, it’s out there, and it’s pretty damn good. It’s real, this is a hoax shoot, or an ambitious project to make a viral video. In fact, I hope you go to YouTube and look it up, and see what you think. Seems like something that would be great to practice and improve your pool skills. Please consider all this and think about it.