The Japanese have them, the Germans have them, the Vietnamese have them, and now China has them, too: ping pong robots. A team of researchers at Zhejiang University in Eastern China has worked a total of four years to come up with two humanoids that can play ping pong with each other or against human players.
The robots, named Kong and Wu, are 160cm tall, weigh 55kg and feature 30 joints. A high-speed camera that can shoot pictures at 120fps makes sure the robots react in 0.05 to 0.1 seconds and with a precision of 2.5cm to balls coming their way. → Read More
I remember us blogging about baseball-playing robots a few times in the past, but table tennis-playing models aren’t really common. A team of researchers around Prof. Kidode at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology are working on one. → Read More
Protect your home or business from unwanted intruders with a pneumatic cannon that shoots water-filled ping pong balls capable of tearing holes through various materials. That, or shoot regular air-filled balls at your friends and family, leaving hilarious-yet-playful welts. → Read More
Oh man, I would really like to once again be able to play some ping pong on a regular basis. My kingdom for a larger apartment, money for a ping pong table, and at least one friend in real life! On a somewhat related note, this weird-ass ping pong paddle is intriguing. You wear the entire thing on your hand, which I’d assume makes it an almost spiritual extension of your body. → Read More
Vernon Graner of the Austin Robot Group has built a three-story-tall robot in the hopes of “evoking dialogue” and “finding ways to get people excited about technology again.” Mission accomplished, sir. Your gigantic robot is truly a wonder to behold. → Read More
The Achilles heel of table tennis: people without friends can’t play. Unless you raise the one side of the table, I suppose. But why do that when you can buy an automatic ball-shooting machine? The Robo-Pong comes in a few different varieties starting at $229 for a basic unit (the 540) or $359 “for intermediate and tournament players” (the 1040) Finally, there’s the Robo-Pong 2040 for $695 (seen in the above video), which recycles the balls you hit back to it, allowing you to play all day and all night. There are also upgrade kits available, so you can start out with the 540 and work your way up as you improve. Robo-Pong [Company Site via Electricpig via Ubergizmo] → Read More
Just one man’s opinion, but I’ve never had any beef with traditional ping pong. If you, however, find yourself longing to play on, say, a round table with five other people (perhaps all wearing mesh jerseys), then this modular ping pong table is for you. → Read More
Ahoy, fellow apartment dwellers. If you’re like me, your apartment, even if roomy, could use more space. I mean, when you’re paying out the rear for a 2 bedroom, where are you going to put your ping pong table? You could just play Wii tennis, but seriously, real ping pong is the way to go. If you’ve got a doorway, you can now have ping pong. This table — net and all — doubles as a door. It swings open like any standard door, but then rotates forward and back, making a playing surface. It’s sort of a sporty take on the Murphy bed. And there’s no reason it has to be confined to table tennis. Indeed, in the future, we see air hockey doors, salad bar doors, baby-changing-station doors, operating table doors, even doors that resurrect Axl Rose’s career. Ok, that last one was a joke. Ping Pong Door [Tekenstein] → Read More
