Japanese baseball robot can hit a 300km/h pitch, whut?

Hiroshima University associate professor Idaku Ishii has developed a robot able to cope with some serious fastball action, able to hit a pitch coming at speeds up to 300 kilometers per hour. We're pretty impressed with this, considering we routinely strike out during heated Engadget Whiffle Ball matches. The robot manages such uber-skilldom by instantly analyzing the imaging results from its precision cameras to determine the balls' trajectory, then whammo, socking the living daylights out of it (that's the technical terminoloy, honest). All of which is part of a plan to replace all humans in the sport of baseball with either mechanoids or cartoons, saving the industry millions in salaries and legal fees.

[Jerok @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

"All of which is part of a plan to replace all humans in the sport of baseball ... saving the industry millions in salaries and legal fees."

This is INSANE!!!!

[Clay2k @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

For those of you out there that don't know how fast 300km/h is, it's about 185.41mph.

[Dominic Frascella @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

thats funny... everywhere I check its 186.41136

[Sebbi @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Japanese have no souls!!! Everybody knows that!

[Dan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

who the hell wants a bunch of robots playing baseball when you can watch juiced men do it?

[t0dd @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

He said About and Duh! its 186.4113598743294837412 mph

[PJ @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

I'm more impressed that you found a picture of a baseball from the 1987 All-Star Game. Oh the pre-internet days, how innocent we were...

[John Galt @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Yes, but can it hit the curve?

[yuppicide @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

I'm waiting for one that can play basketball. Blacks are better than whites in a lot of sports, but robots sure beat the pants off everyone.

I can't wait to see the "Ron Artest robot fight video" where a robot goes into the crowd and punches someone.

[Scot @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

In the same logic as #6.
2 words. Pedro Cerrano. Jobu is afraid of curveball.

[Nicholas Moline @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

So is the Robot on the Cream or the Clear?

[bboy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Saw this machine on the news about a month ago here in Japan..
Picture the Predator's mouth opened up. The bottom two "claws" are two cameras which track the moving object, and resessed back a bit is an "arm" holding a bat. The cameras have some redicioulous frame rate, along with other types of sensors to track objects moving towards it. It has no trouble whatsoever perfectly hitting or catching any object that comes near it. Combine this technology with the Robot air-muscle arms and that dancing robot in the pink dress and you have one kung-fu fighting sex machine.

[Jason @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

heck with the arm, I wanna see the Hemi powered pitching machine that can hurl 180+ mph without ripping the cover off.