If you're going to "unveil a robot", then a better looking Scissors would be called for here.
The algorithm is also likely foolable by throwing what appears to be one symbol (e.g. rock), but then morphs into another symbol (two fingers go out late in the symbol formation, in order to present scissors upon completion of the movement).
A comparison of the reaction time of this robot vs. say... Google's automonous driving car, or vs. an automatic stock trading machine, might present the robot as interesting.
Multiple cameras and a wide variety of acceptable symbol geometries on the part of the human player (rock rotated 90 degrees, the use of two hands, etc) would add realistic complexity... and would require more complex recognition algorithms, likely slowing down the reaction time of the robot.
Beambot's link below is informative. Turns out this is actually an astoundingly versatile multifunction hand; the three fingers can each oppose each other and are fast enough to dribble a ping-pong ball 10 times a second, precise enough to use tweezers to pick up a singe grain of rice, and agile enough to throw a cell phone in the air and catch it with fingertips.
Rock Paper Scissors is only one trick of many, but of course it's the only one the media is interested in. Oh well.
Ok, I'll bite. Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't chance the entire point of rock-paper-scissors? In that case, how would observing your opponent have any affect on the result?
Though I guess I'm backwards enough to have grown up calling it "Paper Rock Scissors", so I might be oblivious to something here.
Back in grade school, against certain opponents, I could "intuit" their plays. In retrospect, I was probably doing something akin to what the robot here does (recognized what their hand was forming before I make my play) + discerning a pattern in their plays.
Also, at this point I have no idea why we played rock-paper-scissors so much in 3rd grade, but we did.
I could beat my younger sister at RPS every throw. I couldn't have told you exactly how I knew, but I knew what she had decided to play whenever she started to move her arm. So I would reveal before her and still win... that freaked her out.
If we played Rock Paper Scissors, and every round I waited until you had thrown and then threw whatever countered your throw, would you be okay with that? That's exactly what this robot is doing, only faster.
That's not really a bad thing, of course, because it's just a bit of fun and an interesting technical achievement. But as far as RPS goes, it's indisputably cheating.
Cheating in rock-paper-scissors is changing your throw when you see what the other person is throwing. I can win every time if I see what you are throwing and can change my throw to beat it.
However, if we are okay with using all your abilities to win and not count that as cheating, I can guarantee I win every time against that robot. I'd just remove the power source.
Kirk only got a commendation for that. He had to work for a long time after the Kobayashi Maru incident to get the Enterprise.
You're begging the question. Achieving the same goals with different rules is a different game. Using stilts and a machine gun to get a ball in a hoop is not basketball.
Yes, it's not a valid solution to the game of basketball, but it is a valid solution to the "get a ball in a hoop" game.
I don't think the Kobayashi Maru test rules said anything about "don't try to break the game". Success can result from relaxing an irrelevant requirement.
It's not irrelevant if it's the difference between winning and losing. Since you're already rewriting the scenario, why not just declare yourself the winner from the start? It would save a lot of effort.
No it's like saying kids cheat on a test because they look at somebody else's test and didn't get caught. They're certainly able to do it and nobody stopped them, right?
Watching the video it still seems like I can still see that the bot is responding to the human. (I mean, I know that is what it's doing, but I thought I wasn't supposed to be able to detect it.)
Dude, I saw that as little kid and it freaked me the hell out. Relentless bald man chased my nightmares for years.
Also, dude! I thought that movie too old / HN too young to remember that sci-fi golden age classic. Thanks for making my day. Although, I worry about bald bad ass chasing me tonight.
considering that we now already have rifle attached directional sound detection of a source of [enemy] shot and experimental helmet mounted phase array radars that are realtime tracking individual flying bullets, the end of people's participation in any kind of duel/battlefield seems to be visible on the horizon.
