[CEATEC 2015] Last year, we saw the Denso Den-Oute-Kun robot play shogi like a boss. While all play and no work makes Jack a wayward boy, thankfully, robots can be “trained”, so to speak – and neither do they think of short changing you when it comes to work. Work is, after all work, and robots are unable to tell the difference between work and play, which is pretty much why the Den-Oute-Kun is back with another traditional game – except that shogi is out of the picture this time around, requiring deftness in addition to precision this time around as it indulges in rounds of kendama.
Apparently, this particular project might seem to be all fun and games for the high school students involved, but it really involves a whole lot of hard work as well. The unique project is a collaboration among a trio of technical high schools in Japan, alongside Denso, of course, to come up with a robot that can handle kendama. The students programmed the Den-Oute-Kun the move sequences in order to perform various kendama tricks, but unfortunately, it is far from being as agile and entertaining as our human counterpart it will need to reset the position of the red ball after a single flip – as long as the ball swings about at the bottom like a pendulum, it is unable to function. I am quite optimistic that this should be a barrier that will be overcome in due time, though.
Cold, mechanical artistry, that is what we would call it.
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