Robot hand wins game by cheating

A robotic hand developed in a lab at the Japanese University of Tokyo is capable of playing the game of rock paper scissors with a human opponent. Man has no chance of winning.

The game of rock paper scissors is normally played by two players shaking a closed fist three times. After the third time, a choice must be made between a rock or a closed fist, which breaks a pair of scissors or two fingers, which in turn cuts paper, or an open hand, which finally folds the stone. The robotic hand-built in the Ishikawa Oku Lab at the University of Tokyo plays the game against a human opponent, but cheats a bit.

The robot wins every time, because it is equipped with a camera and visual system that recognizes within a millisecond which hand the opponent is playing. A millisecond later, the robot hand has formed the winning counter hand and the human opponent loses out in one hundred percent of the cases. So it’s actually cheating, but it happens so fast that the human reflexes can’t keep up. However, how the robot reacts to lizard and Spock is not clear.