Japan's Ishikawa Oku Lab has come out with the Janken robot hand that can never be defeated at rock-paper-scissors. Even so, this next glimpse into the future seems if anything, bittersweet.
The land of the rising sun has done it again; just when you thought there was nothing else they could virtualize, synthesize or sample, they go and tackle one of the simplest strategy games known to man: rock-paper-scissors.
According to
Gawker.com, the Ishikawa Oku Lab-bred
high speed Janken robot hand wins the game - surprisingly enough - not by mind reading but by cheating much quicker than humans can even notice.
In order to elaborate on the concept,
IEEE Spectrum explained:
"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."
It seems Ishikawa Oku developed this hand
in order to "reduce the time delay of human-robot work cooperation." Despite such words it seems that Japan will soon have no more method behind their madness. Taking just about everything from games to the human voice to the next level is one thing; but giving humanity a cold snap of metallic, automated devices to eventually walk alongside us looks as is the work force will one day not require its employees to have a soul.
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