Deadspin: robots

Japanese Baseball Robots Already Elected To The Hall Of Fame

Dashiell Bennett — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:34:15 EDT

Japanese nerds have invented baseball-playing robots with talent far exceeding our own Major League all-stars and they don't require Gatorade or HGH. Well, I guess that's it. We had a great ride, humanity, but our time has passed.

University of Tokyo professor Masatoshi Ishikawa has created two robots, one pitcher and one batter. The pitch-bot throws 90% of its speedballs in the strike zone and is not subject to pitch count. The bat-bot hits 100% of those strikes, and never swings at anything in the dirt. So a batter who can't strike out vs. a pitcher who will never walk him should make for fast moving, but very entertaining games. Especially if the fielding robots play defense like David Ortiz.

Oh, it says here that the batter-bot can't go the opposite field, but that still makes him better than Jose Canseco.

Look out Ichiro and Daisuke Matsuzaka; Japanese professor creates baseball-playing robots [AP]

Yes, But How Does The Robot Do In The Shuttle Run?

Josh Zerkle — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:35:55 EST

I'm not a big fan of discussing physical fitness, mainly because I don't have any. So I'm naturally jealous of any robot that rubs that in by doing pushups all up in my face an' shit. Especially when the robot's face is a big as this guy's. But then in the middle of his demo, his arm falls off. And you would think the robot would start bragging to his friends about it or maybe grab a beer or something, but no.

After they shut the camera off, the robot went on with its original business — killing Sarah Connor.

Strange Push-Up Robot Is Scary [TechEBlog]

The Logical Extension of "Moneyball"

Leitch — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 16:30:37 EST

OK, this is pretty awesome. From our friends at The Griddle comes this video of the world's first baseball playing robot. When they all unite and take over the earth, we will remember this as the first warning sign. Like you wouldn't take him over Tony Womack.

I Still Think This Would Be A Better Hitter Than Neifi Perez [The Griddle]