Students develop a robot that will probably beat you at foosball

If you think you can play foosball with the best of them, you should probably meet this robotic arm.

This robot will beat you at the game of foosball. (Image via EPFL)

Masters students from the Automatic Control Lab (LA) at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed a foosball-playing robot that has the potential to far surpass a mere human’s abilities.

Created for a school project, the robot is more of a mechanical arm attached to a foosball table that can shoot the ball at a speed of almost 20 feet per second.

The robotic arm connected to a foosball table. (Image via EPFL)

“This is already enough to beat the average human,” said Chris Salzmann, head of the project.

The students are creating the robot in such a way that it will actually be more accurate, more strategic, and faster than a human player.

The arm is controlled by two computers. One controls the arm’s mechanical movements, while the other supplies it with information about the ball’s position. In order for the arm to position itself correctly, it must have a clear idea of the ball’s location so the team lined the bottom of the table with transparent material and placed a high-speed camera on the ground to monitor the ball.

“Through image-processing algorithms, we can analyze the movement of the ball in real time. The information that is transmitted to the computer controls the movement and positioning of the arm,” said Martin Savary, a student who also participates in the project.

The transparent bottom of the foosball table. (Image via EPFL)

The team is still working on ways to better coordinate the two computer systems and will eventually condense them into a single computer.

Currently, the robot cannot perform any complex moves, but for now it can still score goals.

The computer responsible for feeding the arm with the necessary information has the potential to analyze more parameters and process information faster than a human. Eventually, it will be able to analyze the location of all the players and even the exact trajectory of the ball as it ricochets off the edges.

EPFL students working on their robot. (Image via EPFL)

Team’s prediction: Remove humans from the game altogether, and watch robots play foosball against other robots.

Even if you don't speak French, you should watch the video below to see this robotic foosball-playing arm in action.

Story via Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne.