They say you can’t cheat a cheater, which is particularly true if the cheater is a robot designed for cheating. Engineers at the Ishikawa Oku Lab, University of Tokyo have created a robot with a high-speed vision system built solely for the purpose of beating human players in rock, paper, scissors. Why? Not sure.
How? According to Automaton,
It only takes a single millisecond for the robot to recognize what shape your hand is in, and just a few more for it to make the shape that beats you, but it all happens so fast that it’s more or less impossible to tell that the robot is waiting until you commit yourself before it makes its move, allowing it to win 100% of the time. You might be thinking that you could fool the system by changing your mind halfway through, but my guess is that the hand and vision system are faster than your reflexes could ever be, and that it would be trivial for the robot to adapt to any creative moves that happens on the human end.
[via Automaton]