Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Video Game Playing Robot

Uses computer vision and robotics technology to play console games meant for human players.
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It has a camera (or perhaps two, for 3-d visual sensing), a CPU and a set of actuators (possibly in the form of human-like arms and hands). The robot is programmed to interact with the arcade game physically. It puts the proper coins into the slot, hits the 1-up button, grabs the joystick and starts hitting the fire button. It sees what happens on the game screen from the camera, then processes the incoming series of images to classify them into known scenarios and adjusts its physical response appropriately.

Starting out with a simple game like pong or video tic-tac-toe would be an easy way to prototype it without having to write lots of tricky AI code.

At first I wanted to put this in Computer:Game:Simulation, but Product:Robot seemed more appropriate.

banksean, Feb 26 2003

Chess Playing Robot http://www.jasonokane.com/tu/280cos/doc/
With vision, AI and robotic piece-movement. (Yes, I know chess isn't a video game.) [pottedstu, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Baked by Nintendo in the 80's http://www.i-mocker...inimocks/nes/19.asp
In full 8 bit goodness... [dbsousa, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

[link]






       I love this. It's an attempt to get computers to deal with human interfaces. Like a chess playing robot that understands your move by looking at the table. This just takes things one step further. Bonus points if the robot is able to figure out the point of the game by trial and error.
st3f, Feb 26 2003
  

       Grand Theft Roboto
thumbwax, Feb 26 2003
  

       Baked in many arcade games (they play themselves when noone else is).
Cedar Park, Feb 26 2003
  

       [Cedar Park]: Its not baked like that. This idea is for a robot that plays arcade games. Not an arcade game with its own AI to play whilst noone else is.   

       However, it is kind of semi-baked in many respects -some of the students in my university department (electronics) do a final year project called 'Robot Football'. This involves 6 radio controlled, wheeled, mouse-sized robots that follow instructions to push a ball in a mock up soccer table. There is an overhead camera assembly for video capture - which, combined with image recognition, feeds information back to a central computer.   

       Different teams of students work on different aspects of the project - video capture, radio tranmission and protocols, on-board electronics etc.. I believe one set of students are working on AI instructions for the robots - if they (or future students) get that to work than this entire contraption will be somewhat like the Video Game Playing Robot.
Jinbish, Feb 26 2003
  

       Didn't that stupid No. 5 robot do this in one of those "Short Circuit" movies?
waugsqueke, Feb 26 2003
  

       [Mr Burns] regarding ROB: the video game ROB played was designed to be played by a robot. My idea is a robot playing video games designed to be played only by humans.
banksean, Feb 26 2003
  

       //It puts the proper coins into the slot, hits the 1-up button, grabs the joystick and starts hitting the fire button.//
In that case, I'M a video game playing robot.
Amos Kito, Feb 26 2003
  

       When this gets baked,can i borrow one? i'm stuck on a level in Max Payne.   

       +
skinflaps, Feb 26 2003
  

       Programming a robot to play a given game is one thing, but programming a robot to learn games is another batch of croissants entirely. Just interpreting what the pixels on the screen meant would be quite the daunting task.   

       Alan Turing would roll over in his grave.
jnoel, Feb 26 2003
  

       [jutta, jnoel] Someone should make a movie about Alan Turing's life. A great tragedy.
banksean, Feb 26 2003
  

       Breaking The Code *was* that movie
thumbwax, Feb 27 2003
  

       Now, why do we need to create something for the sole purpose of partaking in recreational activities, which we created for the sole purpose of partaking in ourselves?
JimX, Dec 21 2003
  

       I'm sorry, but I really see no point in this what so ever. The only reason why I would want a robot playing my video games is that I could perhaps spar with it. However, that is already the game computer's job, so there really isn't any use for the robot.
Spider7, Apr 29 2004
  

       Much like my long time dream of building a pool playing robot, I think the critical element here is the trash-talk subroutine. When the processor detects that a point has been scored (especially in some insanely complicated way governed by dumb luck), the robot should be able to turn to its human opponent and say things like, "Eat that, Monkey Turd!" and "Now who's my bitch? Yeeeah!" or "Puny human! Your skills are feeble when compared to the awesome processing power of my quad Pentium CPU array... Sucka!"
justaguy, Apr 30 2004
  

       Pawn thief is just a sleeper quote be very careful with this player. Play pawn theif play that's all I can say !
pawnthief2, Aug 22 2004
  
      
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