Badminton players should be quivering in their court shoes. A racket wielding robot聽designed to help human players perfect their game has been perfecting its shuttlecock-smashing skills.
The badminton bot has a fixed base and a robotic arm that holds a racket.聽It uses a motion capture camera and some reflective tape on the shuttlecock to work out where to swing.
It鈥檚 developed a bit of subtlety to its game too and is able to play skilful shots like the spin net shot, which is a light hit that causes the shuttlecock to just tumble over the net, wreaking havoc on the opponent.
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Its wrists can also generate more velocity than the human equivalent, however it can鈥檛 yet translate this into overall faster racket speeds.
Humans put their whole body into a shot, something that the badminton bot鈥檚 fixed base is not yet able to do. However, it can generate racket speeds of 21 metres per second, faster than any other robotic arm.
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鈥淏adminton is known to be a high-speed game and requires players to perform dynamic and skilful motions,鈥� says Shotaro Mori at the University of Tokyo, one of the team who developed the robot. It has 鈥渆xcellent potential as a sparring partner,鈥� he says.
The robot only weights around 4 kilograms, so the team plan to eventually add in a moveable base structure so that it can properly navigate the court. At the moment, it can only remain in one place and returns the shuttlecock with a high-speed swing around 70 per cent of the time.
The work is being presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Brisbane, Australia, this week.
The research lab behind the work also previously made a volleyball playing robot that could leap in the air and smash the ball.
Read more: The way toddlers waddle can teach robot footballers how to play
Article amended on 8 June 2018
We have clarified the team鈥檚 work on a volleyball playing robot.
