I went to CHINA just to try this!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,492 words · ~7 min read
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oh oh that's awesome
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so you guys we are here at the hofu institute at uestc
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to check out not just the life-size yao
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ming free throw robot but also
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the one and only badminton playing robot
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i'm gonna uh see if my skills are up to snuff here in just a moment we're gonna
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get briefed on exactly how this thing was built over the last several years
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and see if man is obsolete just yet
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or if we've still got some time left
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thanks to videoblocks for sponsoring this episode they're a great
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stay tuned for an awesome offer from them later on in the video
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so we haven't been briefed yet on how exactly it works but it seems to have
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something to do with these stereo cameras in these base stations at the end of the
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court cool so this robot is not being used right
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now because there's a lineup of people that want to use it but i think i should
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be up now everyone's kind of leaving okay
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you like this yeah should be good okay we can pray
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oh sure all right i guess i'm getting a warm-up
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match
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okay so we're getting a private demo now and we're starting with them showing us
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the two robots playing against each other completely robotic badminton game
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okay so here's how the base station works i was right these two cameras here
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are for stereo computer vision and i was actually wrong about some
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other aspects of it so for example i had thought that these right here might be
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ultrasonic sensors that aided these cameras in some way but no that's not
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the case at all so they're using two baumer cameras they're 2048 by 2048
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resolution and they run at 180 frames per second
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so according to the guys here they manage as little as 10
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milliseconds of delay between the shuttle starting to move
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towards one of the robots and it predicting
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approximately where it's going to land on the court so here's how the game
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starts right now it's very much in prototype
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stages but the plan is actually to turn these into a commercial product and you
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can actually buy one today if you want
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at the value price of just about 65 000
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us dollars for the whole system so that's the robot itself which runs for
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about 30 to 60 minutes on battery the base station with the cameras that's
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powered by it's either a core i5 or a core i7 computer they weren't 100 sure
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and uh i don't know maybe they throw in a racket for you at the same time that one
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i'm not 100 on
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so at this point the robots aren't really aiming at
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anything specific they're just trying to schwack the bird
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kind of that away and then it's up to the other robot to get in the right spot
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so they haven't actually measured the top speed that the robot can travel on
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the court but from just watching them you can see
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especially in a case where one of them mishits
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they can actually get to where they need to go really fast
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so they've got treads on the bottom that allow the entire robot to move on the
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court and then the racket itself and the
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servo that's mounted to it can also travel in both x and y axes like uh a
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cnc as you can see ever since that first
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glitch they've actually been rallying with each other continuously
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and it's finally over you can see it really went for it there though okay
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okay it's my turn to play
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oh nice
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so you can see the robot returns to center every time
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that puts it in the best position to make the next shot although i
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shouldn't say that the robot does it so much as the control tower does it
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so the robot itself actually doesn't have any sensors at all
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and it relies on the cameras to get around on the court
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so they need to use like a tracker pad at the beginning of
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the setup process in order to help measure the court as a calibration
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process now in the future the plan is to continue to develop it
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maybe give it the ability to block a smash
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or give it the ability to watch the player and use ai to predictively decide
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what shot it expects him to play
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and then get ready for it proactively
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look at it go all right let's make it really move
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nice see that
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i hit the ceiling but the robot still moved to a location and made a swing
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that's because what it does is it actually predicts based on the first 10
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milliseconds of the shuttle's movement where it's going to go and then does its
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best to update with more granularity as
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the shuttle continues to fly but it will still take that initial data
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move to where it thinks it's going to go and then use a countdown timer
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calculation to make a swing when it thinks it's going to arrive so watch i'm
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going to try and do that again as long as i'm not smashing too hard it
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can actually play back some of my downward shots
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but it'll have to wait until the racket's angle can be adjusted before it
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can do so with more consistency now the original model that they used
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to win the robotics contest back in i think it was 2015 or 2016 when
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the initial design was made had two rackets one that hit this way and one
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that hit vertically but what they found as they continued to refine the design
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was that it really just didn't make that much of a difference at this level
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so according to the students here
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the condition of the shuttle shouldn't make that much of a difference
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because of the way that they're calculating its likely trajectory
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but i did notice the one that i was using just now it missed twice within a
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span of about 30 seconds so
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oh not bad oh
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wow it actually won a point on me there your turn
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okay hold on i gotta ah gotta do this up
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shut up i showered this morning no i showed up that doesn't change that the
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easy rig is sweaty you know how to use it oh man that sucks
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what the heck
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i can't figure out how to get you in focus
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did you hit it out again robot's gonna kick your ass dennis
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dude what this is like nerd sports all
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over again so
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we're not at the point yet where all humans
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can be bested by robots
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but at least some of them can
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and so i for one am gonna prepare myself
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to welcome our robot overlords and now a word from our sponsor
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jason from drive badminton today but we have LTT shirts down there and also link
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down there is our community forum which you should totally join now i'm gonna
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get back to my game