Undefeatable Rock-Paper-Scissors Robot Cannot Possibly be Defeated

Thanks to the folks over on Reddit for digging up this amazing clip of a rock-paper-scissors robot that wins EVERY SINGLE TIME. It comes from the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory at the University of Tokyo, and it uses a high-speed vision sensor to ‘see’ what the human hand will play (for example, paper), and then responds with a winning play (scissors).

I was lucky enough to visit this laboratory a couple of years back, and even then it was a place packed with futuristic ideas. Some of you may recall the laboratory’s crazy-fast book scanner, which digitizes a book’s pages as you quickly flip them. And then there is this baseball-playing robot duo that pitches and bats a ball using a high-speed camera for guidance.

This kind of motion capture technology is far superior to mass-market solutions like Microsoft’s Kinect, which are not as fast. Check out the video demo of the rock/paper/scissors robot below, and let us know what you think.

Personally, I’d be even more impressed if it could do rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock…