You'll never ride shotgun against this robot

Mike Krumboltz
You'll never ride shotgun against this robot

Fancy yourself a pro at rock, paper, scissors? Believe you have an uncanny ability to predict your opponent's next move? Prepare to be humbled, human.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo's Ishikawa Oku Lab have sped up their super-duper rock, paper, scissors robot.


Last year, Yahoo Shopping's Digital Crave covered the machine's ability to predict (aka "cheat") via a high-speed camera aimed at the opponent's fingers. The camera could quickly determine whether the person was going to use a fist (for a rock), a palm (for paper) or two fingers (for scissors).

But there was a problem. Gizmag explains that it took the robot hand another "20 milliseconds to position its own fingers," a small delay that revealed the robot wasn't exactly playing fair. Researchers sped up that delay. Now, instead of 20 milliseconds, the robot can reposition its fingers in just one millisecond.

Via Gizmag:

By recognizing the human player's strategy earlier, the robot appears to be showing its hand at exactly the same time as its opponent. Whether or not you feel this is cheating, the team has virtually perfected the robot's sleight of hand technique.

In other news, Skynet reports its line of T-800s will be ready for store shelves by next Christmas.