from the mundane to the mundane and back again

[Note: I didn’t have any time to write anything this weekend, but here’s something I did from 2 years ago that I don’t hate]

TOKYO (A&P) — Look out Hideki Matsui and Daisuke Matsuzaka . A pair of baseball-playing super robots (or Base-Bots) that can pitch and hit with amazing results have been developed in Japan. The pitching robot, nicknamed ”Rodan” has a three-fingered hand, can throw 95% of its pitches in the strike zone and won’t need any relief from the bullpen. The batting robot, nicknamed ”Gamera” has a sensor to determine if pitches are strikes or balls, hits balls in the strike zone 100% of the time and doesn’t swing at pitches outside the strike zone. The two robots were created by University of Tokyo professor Kawabata Makoto. ”The level of the robotics technology of each robot is extremely high,” Makoto said. “What was difficult was to create a mechanism to satisfy such a high level of roboticness.” However the robot ballplayers are not without their own unique problems. ”Rodan” was recently arrested in Tokyo’s so called robot town district for an altercation with a robot prostitute or (Ho-Bot), while “Gamera” created tabloid headlines when he disrupted this years robot awards (the Robies) by appearing drunk on robo-saki (aka: high grade machine oil). Still the sky does seem to be the limit for these talented Base-Bots. The future of baseball? It does compute.

a Base-Bot