NewsProfessor creates baseball-playing robots
Robotic slugger, pitcher developed in JapanBy Ed Eagle / MLB.com
07/25/09 8:00 AM ET
Masatoshi Ishikawa is just seven players shy of fielding what could be a pretty formidable baseball team in any "industrial league."Ishikawa, a University of Tokyo professor, has created two baseball-playing robots. One is a three-fingered pitcher that hits the strike zone 90 percent of the time. The second is a batter that, by using a sensor to determine balls and strikes, won't swing at anything outside the zone. And for those pitches that do cross the dish, the robotic slugger connects nearly 100 percent of the time.
"The demand level of the robotics technology of each robot is very high," Ishikawa told The Associated Press. "What was difficult was to create a mechanism to satisfy such a high level of demand."
The androids, which resemble assembly-line machines rather than humans, aren't exactly blue-chip prospects just yet. The pitcher can only hit 25 mph on the radar gun, but Ishikawa is hoping to eventually have it throwing 93 mph cheese in addition to an assortment of offspeed pitches. Ishikawa hopes to have the batter hit the ball to all fields.
Ed Eagle is a reporter and producer for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
