Robot can beat you at table football

Students at EPFL in Switzerland have built a table football robot that can beat humans, striking the ball nearly twice as hard as any real player. The prototype uses dedicated software to position the rods with sub-millimeter precision, supported by agile mechanical bars that can adjust rapidly. EPFL student Leo Sibut said the system updates rod positions 300 times per second and aims at close to double the average human shot strength. To track the ball, the robot relies on a high-speed camera under the table’s transparent floor capturing 300 images per second. After six months of design, the group is now planning a more advanced strategy and possible robot-versus-robot competitions.