Official News page 10

ROBOTS OF THE WEEK: PING-PONG PLAYERS

by Hazed

Chinese scientists have come up with a pair of robots that can play table tennis. Kong and Wu are five foot three inches tall and weigh 121 pounds. Their right hands hold the bat and their left appendages have three fingers to grasp the ball.

You might wonder just what use a table-tennis-playing robot is - well, they weren't designed to do that, but their makers decided it would be a good way to test their abilities to process images, as well as their dexterity. They use an overhead camera to automatically track the speed, direction and position of the ball, and they have a reaction time of between 0.05 and 0.1 seconds.

Watch Kong and Wu in action in the video news report here.

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