Robotic hand catches 300km/h fastballs
By Peter Rojas 
posted Aug 4th 2005 4:20PM
posted Aug 4th 2005 4:20PM
Yogi Berra ain't gonna like this: researchers at the University of Tokyo have created a robotic catcher that can
catch a 300km/h fastball. The robot is really just a robotic claw with three fingers and an array of photo detectors
that can track a ball's movement and instantly calculate its trajectory. Now all they have to do is pair it up with
that robot which can hit 300km/h fastballs some dude at
Hiroshima University created a few months back…
P.S. - The video is sort of hypnotic.
um... why do they need the robot that can catch a 300hm/h fastball when they already have a robotic batter that can hit the 300km/h fastball?
Looks like I should add a quarter and hope it will grab the teddy bear for me.
Pretty soon we'll have a Basewars league...
http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/basewars.shtml
nobody remembers wireless joe jackson.
It's really just km/h. The p for per was deemed useless by the metric system.
What is a Kmph? is that kilo miles per hour? is it supposed to be mph or kph?
I'm thinking that Japan is going to be the first to have Robotic Baseball as an official sport.
Is it me, or does the video look like the ball is moving at LOT slower than 300km/h. I'm not saying I can visually approximate something like 200mph, but it looks like they're tossing the ball right into the hand pretty slowly. I though the hand moved, but it just closes at the right time.
the video shown doesn't look like 300km/h which roughly translates to 186mph it looks closer to 50mph
#5
The acronym for kilometers is km, not k :)
^^^ i was about to say the same thing. sure it wasn't 30KM/h?
points to #3 for the Futurama reference!
They should overclock it and call it "The Rafael Palmerobot"!
What about fastballs in the dirt??? Michael Barret of the Cubs could have used 1 last night!!!
What about fastballs in the dirt??? Michael Barret of the Cubs could have used 1 last night!!!
What a daft video. The least they could do is ramp it up to 300km/h, not the soft little sitters they seemed to be lofting at the hand.
I feel that any second this robot hand would to try to grab/crush my balls.
am i just paranoid? did anyone else think that?
What about curves, sinkers, screwballs??? What are ye to do then smarty-hand?!!?