In 2017, Toyota launched CUEan internal project in which employees would work on a basketball robot, with the aim of seeing how far robotics and artificial intelligence could go in adapting to physical tasks. In this case putting a basketball in a basket.
The third generation of the robot, CUE 3, broke the world record for free throws made consecutively by a robot. He scored 2,020 consecutive free throws and the series only ended because the engineers present ended up going home. Otherwise, he might still be shooting…
The Guinness Book of Records now announces that the sixth generation of the project broke a new record last September, that of the farthest shot scored by a humanoid robot.
Soon a dunking robot?
CUE 6 thus managed a shot 24 meters 55 from the basket. This is closer than the record held by a human being, established by a certain Joshua Walker two years ago. The latter thus scored from 34 meters 60.
The difference is that Joshua Walker needed around thirty attempts to succeed in his shot, while Toyota engineers hoped that CUE 6 would be able to self-calibrate in order to succeed in his shot the first time. It didn't go far, and after a few adjustments, the robot succeeded on its second attempt.
In charge of the CUE project, Tomohiro Nomi explains “wanting to create something interesting, show the power of our know-how and let the world know that Japan can still do a lot of things. »
Now the goal is to dribble the next generations of CUE robots, with Tomohiro Nomi's ultimate dream being to create a version “able to dunk like Michael Jordan. »
