Table football gets robot treatment

Engineering students in Adelaide have taken top prize in their annual mechatronics competition with a robotic table football that’s giving its human opponents a good kicking.

The combination of a 96 pinhole camera and an LED sensor grid keep track of the balls on pitch location, this data  is fed back to the main processor which then decides on the best move to be made.

Eight servo motors control the rods on which the plastic players sit and the force behind these shots must give almost every player on the pitch the power of a world class striker.

We’re still trying to find out if the robot is restricted to only moving two player rods at any one time, which of course would put it on a par with the two armed human opposition but even so, the switching between rods when playing table football can be a cumbersome exercise so the robot powered machine has a big advantage.

To level up any game against this formidable opponent we say “spinning” should not only be allowed but positively encouraged.

Related stories