Not sure what we’re talking about? Last month, the [Kuka Robot Group] put out a highly polished video showing an industrial robot playing table tennis against the apparent world champion of the sport — it was extremely well done and entertaining to watch, but unfortunately… also fake. Weeks after the first [Kuka] video came out, someone named [Ulf Hoffmann] released another video, a small table tennis playing robot that looked almost feasible.
2 comments:
When I watched the original video of the professional ping-pong players playing ping-pong against the robot I was truly amazed at how advanced the technology was of the robot. Its a shame that eh Kuka company had to lie about their product and fake a commercial. The video was extremely well done and looked almost flawless. The quality was very high and I was completely convinced that this robot was extremely accurate and was actually playing live against a professional player. Its just a shame that such a well know and leading robotics company had to fake a video that highlighted their product. Maybe next time they will think twice before they fake another video.
I had not seen this video prior to reading the article, so going in I already knew it was fake. That said however, I definitely could see how it would be believable. To someone inexperienced with CGI, the tiny details pointed out in the article never would have been noticed, I definitely didn't pick up on them. And I think it would be believable to see a robot perform in that way. Its an entirely different skill set, but a few years ago they had a robot named Watson play as a contestant on Jeopary, and it dominated. The idea that robots may be able to beat us in various types of competition is very real.
I will say, one aspect that may have made the video more believable to me is if the tennis player had gotten at least a little sweaty. I know its just table tennis, but it seems likely that he'd be sweating.
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