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Published: 17-September-2004.
Foosball is the well known table game resembling soccer in which the ball is moved by human players by manipulating rods to which small figures of players are attached, suspended over the pitch, moving laterally and twisting in a kicking motion. Nebel and his team have built a foosball table that has motors attached to the players on one side of the 'pitch'.
These are then controlled by a computer that views the ball via a camera mounted below the opaque pitch at a rate of 3000 times per minute. The computer appears to be quite good. In a simple mode of play, where the robot's strategy is to just whack the ball, it scores about every 36 seconds, and has beaten 85% of a random sample of human opponents.
 Photo: Universität Freiburg.
It also has a more complex mode where it calculates ball control, and more strategic methods of moving the ball across the pitch. The robot is not allowed to cheat. "Spinning is not allowed. It [the robot] can't turn the rod more than 360 degrees," Nebel says.
Nebel and his team continue to make improvements to the complex mode software, and expect that it will soon help the robot to play better than it does currently in the simple mode. "An expert player from the German foosball league had no problem beating the robot 10 games to 1," Nebel says. "But in three to five years time the robot should be able to beat the world champion."
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