Have you heard of the 6’3″ basketball player who can make every shot within 3.6 meters of the hoop? No, it’s not Steph Curry. This player isn’t eligible for the NBA — it’s not even human. Introducing CUE, a humanoid robot built by a group of Toyota engineers.
Next #MarchMadness MVP?
pic.twitter.com/r8UefH8tVk
— CNET (@CNET) March 20, 2018
CUE makes free throws with 100% accuracy thanks to AI-learned shooting techniques. Recently, its mettle was tested against a pair of professional players in Tokyo. CUE defeated the two handily, sinking every shot it took.
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Its pin-point accuracy stems from the 200,000 shots that CUE took to hone its form. That’s over 180,000 more field goals than NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal attempted over his entire career.
Alvark Tokyo, the team who sent two players to shoot around with CUE, has named Shaq (and Steph Curry) as the next potential challengers:
Sir @SHAQ, #CUE aka #JapaneseSepth will do a shooting competition on March 28th at our halftime show. If #CUE wins, he could name you or @StephenCurry30, as a next challenger. He is ready. Are you? #アルバルク東京 #WE #alvarktokyo #Bリーグ @NBA @NBAJPN
— アルバルク東京【ALVARKTOKYO】 (@ALVARK_TOKYO) March 17, 2018
Our money’s on CUE.
Though it may shoot impeccably, the humanoid is far from a complete player. It can’t dribble or move its feet.
That doesn’t mean this isn’t significant in terms of robot involvement in sports. Granted CUE is not the first robotic application to basketball — in 2011, a team of Taiwanese researchers programed a robotic seal (yes, a seal) to shoot with 99% accuracy within a distance of three feet. But CUE offers a level of realism and performance that our shooting seal did not.
We’ve also seen examples in other sports — Omron Corporation used AI to develop a bot, FORPHEUS, who acts as a table tennis tutor — but nothing yet that replicates an aspect of game play as effectively as CUE.
Obviously CUE has a long way to go before taking the court and competing next to humans. That doesn’t mean that we won’t be able to learn a thing or two from CUE and other android friends. For now, teaching athletes to improve performance might be the best use of robotics in the sporting world.