The unique Janken robot was created by Japanese scientists in the Ishigawa Oku laboratory of the University of Tokyo. This highly specialized mechanism is not only able to play the game "rock-paper-scissors" with a person, but also to win. And always win, 100% of the time. The probability of the robot losing is excluded.
The secret of this success lies in a specialized human hand tracking system, consisting of a high-speed video camera and a manipulator that acts as a robot arm. A digital camera takes pictures of a human hand every thousandth of a second and quickly analyzes its smallest movements. Based on the analysis, the processor is able to predict in advance what gesture a person will show, and to outstrip him, giving the command to the manipulator to show the desired "figure". The whole process, from analyzing a picture to giving the robot's hand the right gesture, takes no more than 1 millisecond.
Of course, from a mathematical point of view, the probability of winning a person and a robot is 1: 3, but in fact the robot is significantly ahead of a person and always wins, adjusting its answer to the gesture of a human hand. As a result, the person does not even notice the catch. The robot acts so fast that it creates the illusion of synchronized action, that the robot is playing by the rules and that it is constantly lucky. Attempts to deceive the mechanism, changing one character for another halfway, do not lead to anything - Janken timely calculates this enemy's cunning and gives out his own character.
Visitors to the exhibition, who first saw the robot and got acquainted with its capabilities, often wondered: who will win this game if two robots compete? Nobody really would have won. Since the movement of the manipulator arm begins only after analyzing the movement of the opponent's arm, both robots will simply wait for each other.
The purpose of this project is a practical demonstration of the possibilities of innovative technologies, including those related to the cooperation of humans and machines. Programmers have also shown that modern robotic mechanisms are capable of working in teams, constantly monitoring the work of other machines and people. At the same time, robots can be completely autonomous, have no communication channels with each other, have excellent observation and quick reaction.
