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Japan has enlisted robots to train their national volleyball team

By Max Toomey
Published

Japan is using a six-handed volleyball-playing robot to train its national team.

The “volleybot” is designed to help teams practice their spikes: a forceful, downward, jumping strike. The disembodied hands are either pre-programmed or controlled by a touch screen. The coach can set the volleybot to block positions above the net. As you can see in the video above, the hands speed off down a belt at 3.7 meters per second at the touch of a button , “jumping” a little to mimic a well co-ordinated team.

The robot was developed at the University of Tsukuba,  in collaboration with Japan Sport Agency’s High Performance Support Project.

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