Toyota’s Humanoid Robot Hits Free Throws With Nearly 100% Accuracy

A robot basketball player always seemed like a fantasy from a Sci-Fi movie? Well, it’s not anymore.

Toyota Engineering Society’s robot named CUE 3 is a 6’3″ machine, able to play basketball and actually hit free throws with almost 100 percent accuracy.

What makes it possible?

Using the sensors on its torso, CUE 3 is a 6’3″computes as a three-dimensional image where the basket is and adjusts motors inside its arm and knees to coordinate moves and give the shot the right angle.

Stanford University Professor Oussama Khatib directs the university’s robotics lab and believes that the robot shows off complex activities such as using sensors and nimble computation in real time.

Khatib also believes that “what Toyota is doing here is really bringing the top capabilities in perception with the top capabilities in control to have robots perform something that is really challenging”.

“Shooting hoops are made possible thanks to a good vision system that is able to compute the ball’s path”, added Professor Oussama Khatib.